Clarity
by peppermiintmocha
Summary: Vanessa Liang ー eighteen, psychologist, illusionist, and agent of SHIELD. What happens if you throw the Avengers Initiative, the Norse god of mischief, and an alien invasion into the mix? You get something like, "'Countering hostile deities' wasn't in my job description but at least I came out of it with a cool nickname."
1. Initiative

**Welcome Note:**

Hey there! A warm welcome for new and returning readers alike to _Clarity_ , a first-time Marvel Cinematic Universe fanfiction! I hope that you'll find it as enjoyable to read as I find it to write. If you have time, please feel free (and I would very much appreciate it) to leave behind some feedback.

 **Obligatory Disclaimer:** I claim no ownership to any part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe; the Avengers and other such characters, places, and plots belong to Marvel Studios.

(this chapter has been edited as of _June 5th, 2018_ )

* * *

 _She stood in front of the mirror and tentatively traced her reflection._

 _Slowly, she let the tendrils of silver slide across her irises, filling her gaze with a pearly glow. All the details around her, from the pores on her face to each strand of black hair, sharpened into startling definition._

 _She allowed illusionary trails of colour to form in the air, allowed them to ripple and undulate around her shoulders. With a stray line, she wove a small bird, which flew over her head before vanishing._

 _No matter how many times she did it, and in whose service, it still seemed unreal._

 _But, according to her mother, it had been her reality since birth._

 _She closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were once again a deep, coffee brown, and the sinuous swirls of colour were gone._

* * *

With a loud crack, the punching bag split open and flew off its chain, sand spilling over the tear in the fabric. Vanessa Liang stood from her seat and walked over to the sole occupant of the boxing gym, concerned.

"Steve, are you alright? That's the second bag you've broken today," she said mildly. "I know you're a super soldier and you don't need a break, but at least think about the gym owners."

He shook his head, breathing hard. "I've paid for all of them," he said between gasps, picking up another heavy bag from the nearby pile with ease and stringing it up. "And more for tomorrow."

Vanessa blinked twice. "You're not seriously thinking that you can go through them all, are you? It's three in the morning and the place opens at six. three hours and -" she did a quick count - "six bags means two bags per hour. This isn't taking into consideration the time it takes to clean up all the sand you spill between bags."

Steve levelled her with a look that said 'challenge accepted.' "You don't have to stay here, you know. You've done all you can to help me already, and I appreciate it. I don't need you to stay up all night and watch me punch things."

"I'm paid to do it," Vanessa said with a shrug. "And sometimes, I can't sleep, either. One of these days I might start doing this, too."

"Don't," said Steve. "It's addictive."

She smiled slightly and bent down to straighten the fallen punching bag, which was still spewing sand onto the floor. "How about a little bit of sparring? I haven't practiced in a while and you can be sure my superiors will grill me on it if they find out I'm rusty -"

Oh, speak of the devil.

Vanessa's 'internal radar,' as she liked to call it, pinged with the approach of the most superior of her superiors ー Nick Fury. She recognized the distinctive feeling that accompanied his proximity: an inexplicable quality of both safety and danger at the same time.

"Vanessa?" asked Steve. "What's the matter?"

She glanced at the doorway expectantly. "'The matter' will be here soon."

He frowned at the vague answer and proceeded to fetch a dustpan and broom to sweep up the spilled sand. Vanessa waited with bated breath for Fury to emerge from the doorway, and after a few moments, he did, looking as intimidating and imposing as ever with his eyepatch and trenchcoat.

"You were expecting me," he observed. "Did Coulson tell you I was coming?"

"No, Director," she said. "It was my sixth sense, you know."

Fury almost smiled. "Of course it was. Good evening, Captain Rogers. Trouble sleeping?"

Steve emptied the first load of sand into a trash can. "I slept for seventy years, sir. I think I've had my fill."

"Then you should be out, celebrating, seeing the world," said Fury.

Vanessa gave a huff. "That's what I've been trying to convince him of every second day for the past three months, Director. With little success, might I add."

Ever since they'd fished a frozen Captain America out of the ocean, SHIELD had been trying with futility to reintegrate the super soldier back into society. Trying to persuade him to explore the 21st century when his mind was still locked in the 20th. Trying to convince him that the demons of his past could no longer touch him when they were buried sixty-five years away.

Three months ago, Fury put Vanessa on the job. She didn't want to take any pride in it, but since her involvement they'd seen some improvement: he went to the gym a little bit less, slept a little more, was more willing to go outside, to try things. But there was one more thing necessary to his full recovery and Vanessa made sure Fury was aware of it ー an assignment.

"I went under, the world was at war," Steve was saying. "I wake up, they say we won. They didn't say what we lost."

Fury seemed to be considering his next words carefully. "We've made some mistakes along the way," he admitted. "Some very recently."

Vanessa met the look of understanding in her superior's gaze and saw a spark ignite in Steve's eyes. "You here with a mission, sir?" he asked. "Trying to get me back in the world?"

"I am," said Fury, pulling out a file from inside his trenchcoat (where did he have room for the thing?) and handing it to him. Then he looked at Vanessa. "And I daresay we'll need you in this one, too, Agent Liang."

"Me?" she asked, her heartbeat speeding up just a little bit in anticipation. "On field duty or interrogation?"

"Probably a bit of both," he replied. "I think you'll be putting those skills to use. There's a-"

"This is Hydra's secret weapon," Steve interrupted quietly. There was no mistaking the apprehension in his voice.

Fury began pacing like he tended to do every time he had explaining to do. In her time at the agency, Vanessa found it to be a common trait among all SHIELD higher-ups, actually.

"Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you," he expounded. "He thought what we think; the Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs."

At this, Vanessa frowned. The words were vaguely familiar to her but only in the way that bits and pieces of snatched conversations in the corridors of the Triskelion were ー whatever they were talking about, she didn't have enough clearance to hear.

"Sir-" she began, but Fury cut across her.

"You can have a look at the files later," he said, motioning toward the manila folder Steve still held. "I don't have much time to explain right now. Oh, and your clearance has been upped to seven. Do with that what you will when you get to the Helicarrier."

She processed the abrupt influx of unexpected information silently. _Clearance upped to seven. Helicarrier._

"Who took it from you?" asked Steve. He was wearing a worrying expression that Vanessa knew all too well ー a mixture of hopelessness and exasperation. He was disappointed with the world and what it had come to, how little it had changed.

"He's called Loki," Fury answered. This piqued Vanessa's interest ー she was something of a mythology buff as a child and could never dissociate the name 'Loki' with the phrase 'mother to an eight-legged horse'. After the incident in Puente Antiguo had confirmed the existence of Norse gods, she was more curious than ever.

But of course, now isn't the time to ask.

"He's not from around here. There's a lot we'll have to bring you up to speed on if you're in. The world has gotten even stranger than you already know."

Steve looked unimpressed. "At this point, I doubt anything would surprise me."

Fury wore the ghost of a smirk. "Ten bucks says you're wrong. There's a debriefing package waiting for you back at your apartment. Go with him, Liang. Like I said, we'll probably need you, too."

"Understood, Director." She slung her small backpack over her shoulder as Steve took down the punching bag.

"Coulson will pick the two of you up in a Quinjet after he's done his thing." Fury added, "Anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?"

The super soldier's voice was tight when he replied, "You should have left it in the ocean."

* * *

The ringing of Vanessa's cell phone was deafening in the ensuing silence as they digested the contents of the debriefing package. The Tesseract, space portals, Norse myths coming off the page… it was a lot.

"Give me a second," she muttered, standing up and pulling her phone out of her pocket. The seal of SHIELD glowed brightly on the screen.

 _Incoming Call: Phil Coulson_

"Vanessa Liang speaking."

"Are you and the Captain ready?" Coulson's voice crackled through the speakers. Vanessa could hear the obvious excitement in it. "I'll be over in five."

"We're ready," she said. "How did all of this happen, again? The debrief wasn't much help."

Coulson laughed. "Hang in there. I'll explain later."

"You'd better."

"Well, wait for my text."

He hung up. Vanessa put her cell phone away.

"They'll be here in five minutes," she repeated to Steve, who nodded numbly. "It's bothering you, isn't it? Did you want to talk?"

"Not really, no. What use would it be?" he asked, his voice bitter. "It's not like you can help me decide whether or not I'm disappointed in the world."

"You could let me try," she suggested, sitting back down on the small couch, which sunk even further under their combined weight. "Or what, you think I'm too young? Not experienced enough to understand how the world works yet?"

"That's not it," he said, but took it back immediately when he realized his expression must have betrayed his words. "Okay, maybe a little bit. You're eighteen, Vanessa."

"Eighteen and a psychology graduate of Columbia University and an agent of SHIELD," she added. "Fluent in four languages and a martial artist. I'm not saying these things to brag, Steve, but what would it take for you to realize that I'm able help you?"

 _I don't know if anyone can help me anymore._

 _Not when my enemy is literally the world._

Those words hovered in the air almost visibly. Vanessa took them in silently and, sensing a sort of heaviness that she had no way to clear, opted to change the subject.

"I hope we'll get to work together on this mission," she said lightly. "I'd like to see the famous Captain America in action."

Steve laughed half-heartedly. "And I bet there's more to you than just taekwondo, although you're already impressive at that."

"I'm flattered," she said with a smile. "You owe me sparring, by the way. Well, provided that the Earth survives the-"

Vanessa cut herself off in the same way she did with Fury's arrival. She sensed the energy signature of a Quinjet, and within it, Coulson's bright vitality. Unlike the cryptic energy Fury exuded, Coulson's was more like a breeze ー constantly in calm motion. Well, he was a little more agitated than normal, and it amused Vanessa to think why. "They're here. On the roof."

Steve nodded and leaped into motion immediately, grabbing a jacket and following her out the door. Her phone vibrated in her pocket as a sort of wordless confirmation. After a few flights of stairs, the two emerged on the rooftop tarmac, where a Quinjet bearing the seal of SHIELD was parked, ready. The side door slid open to reveal a beaming Phil Coulson.

"Good morning," he said happily, even though it was four a.m. and the apocalypse could be on the horizon. "Captain Rogers, Agent Liang."

"Mornin'," Vanessa greeted with a wave. The gesture turned out to be unnecessary, because at the moment, she was effectively invisible to the other agent.

She waited patiently (and quite bemusedly) as Coulson shook Steve's hand several times, whilst over-enthusiastically gushing, "It's great to meet you."

Finally, after he let Steve step into the jet, Vanessa found an opportunity to voice her issues. "Hope you have a better explanation for us, Agent Coulson, because the debriefing package looks like it was slapped together in ten minutes."

Coulson sighed. "It was. Time was a luxury we didn't have."

Vanessa gave a noncommittal sound of understanding before saying, "You had, what, five hours? We should've gotten a debrief worth twenty minutes, at least."

"Shut up and get on the jet, Liang," said Coulson, shooting her a mock glare. "You'll get the briefing as soon as we take off."

* * *

Steve's reaction to all the twenty-first century technology on the Helicarrier was like a child seeing snow for the first time and Vanessa watched the scene unfold fondly. She knew from experience, spending most of her childhood Shanghai, China, where it seldom snowed and when it did, it was limited to a few flakes here and there.

She herself was impressed with it, even after spending months in the fancy, high-tech corridors of the Triskelion.

Sadly, the moment didn't last long, because they got right down to business.

"We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet," Coulson was saying. "Cell phones, laptops ー if it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and years for us."

Agent Romanoff crossed her arms. "That's still not going to find them in time."

Vanessa glanced at the SHIELD agent ー the infamous Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff. She had never met the older woman before, but she was one of the most notorious operatives in the agency and an object of much speculation among the newer recruits. Standing near her was Dr. Bruce Banner, the renowned scientist in gamma radiation, but perhaps better known as… the Hulk.

Vanessa couldn't help but be apprehensive about the doctor's involvement, and she had voiced this opinion during the briefing on the Quinjet. Coulson reassured her that the necessary precautions had been taken, but she had a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn't be enough.

"Call every lab you know," Banner was saying. As a regular human, he wasn't very fearsome or threatening, although freakishly intelligent. "Tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm based on cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places. Do you have somewhere for me to work?"

"Agent Romanoff," said Fury. "Would you show Dr. Banner to his laboratory, please?"

She smiled and waved a hand at the doctor. "You're gonna love it, doc. We've got all the toys."

The two left. Vanessa paced the Helicarrier bridge, glancing at the array of glowing screens, all of them scouring the planet for signs of Loki. They were using satellite facial recognition and the footage salvaged from the Project PEGASUS site, which she had watched several times already.

It intrigued her, somewhat, that the man who emerged from the Tesseract portal was supposedly a mad god bent on taking over the Earth. He didn't look the part, not with those eyes, he didn't. What was his incentive? His means, aside from the Tesseract?

If they ever caught him, it would be her job to find out.

She felt Fury come up behind her. "I would take my hand off that gun, if I were you," he said, voice dripping with amusement. "Agent Whitney there thinks you might shoot him for playing Galaga on the job."

Vanessa hadn't noticed that her fingers were absently toying with the Glock resting in her thigh holster. She took her hand away from it, muttering an apology to the agent she was standing behind. "Nervous habit."

"Not a terrible one." Fury smirked. "I never thought it hurt to be a little paranoid."

She had just opened her mouth to respond when a nearby agent looked up from the screen. Vanessa recognized him as Jasper Sitwell, whom she had met very briefly once during her training days. "We got a hit. Sixty-seven percent match. Weight, crossmatch, seventy-nine percent."

Coulson seemed to materialize beside them. "Location?"

"Stuttgart, Germany," said Sitwell. "Twenty-eight, Konigstrasse. He's not exactly hiding."

"Well, Captain," said Fury, shooting a glance at Steve, who was standing off to the side. "You're up. And Liang, you're with him."


	2. Encounters

**Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, favourited, and followed! It really made my day seeing those :)**

* * *

Vanessa zipped up her jacket and tied her hair back, thankful that they had set aside a locker in the Helicarrier for her, stocked with gear. As she turned to head out, her SHIELD-issued cell phone vibrated loudly against the metal shelf it rested on.

She picked it up, expecting some sort of mission update. Instead, her screen flashed brightly with:

 _Incoming Call ー_ _William Choi_

She stared at glowing words for several moments as the phone continued to buzz in her grasp. In the rush of the mission, she'd almost forgotten that, outside of the impending cataclysm, her normal life and friends still existed.

She knew that it was wrong to pick up personal calls during work time, but a small voice urged her to break the rule.

 _What if you don't make it out alive?_ it whispered.

On the final ring, she swiped to the right.

"Nessa?" came William's painfully familiar voice. "I thought you weren't going to pick up."

"What is it?" she asked. Vanessa felt bad about acting so callous to her closest friend, especially when this call could have very well been the last time they ever heard the other's voice. But the mission couldn't wait much longer. "I'm at work, Will. And it's really busy."

She wanted so badly to tell him what was going on, and to have him respond with his characteristic optimism, to reassure her with his bright playfulness. But all she got was a disappointed reply that resonated with the feeling in her own chest.

"Oh," he said lamely. "I was going to ask if you wanted to go to the movies with me, Ryan, and Cor. Tonight at seven. Could you get off work by then?"

Vanessa felt another pang of inefficacy. Ever since she'd started working for SHIELD, she saw less and less of her friends. She missed Cordelia's quirky enthusiasm, Ryan's clever humour, and most of all, the lively confidence of the boy who was not but may as well have been her family.

"Sorry, I can't," she said. "Something really big came up. It's classified, of course. Even if it were over by seven tonight, I'd still be in the middle of the Atlantic."

"What?" William practically yelled into the phone. "You're where? How do you even have service?"

In spite of herself, Vanessa smiled a little at his incredulity. "Work benefits, I guess. I get cell service basically everywhere."

"Lucky," he moaned, diffusing the regretful tension on the line. "Well, tell us when you have time, okay? You do know that you're missed when you're not here."

"I will," she promised.

Vanessa moved to end the call with a swipe of her finger when William whispered, "Be careful."

"I will," she said again, and the line cut off.

She double checked her gear and ammunition a final time and left her cell phone in the locker, trying to fool herself into thinking that nothing had happened.

 _You can't afford sentiment, Vanessa_ , she chided herself. _Focus on the mission._

* * *

The Quinjet was silent save for sound of the aircraft's engine and the wind whipping past them at high speeds. Agent Romanoff piloted the plane. Steve sat quietly in his full Captain America attire, shield and all. Vanessa was in the co-pilot's seat, inspecting all of the buttons on the dash.

Romanoff broke the silence. "So, how long have you been with SHIELD?"

"Not long," Vanessa replied, noticing a clear tremor in her voice. Sweat had also gathered on her palms, and she wiped them off futilely on her pants. Even though she had tried to convince herself that there wasn't nearly as much risk as she thought there was, it didn't stop her from being nervous. She had never been assigned a mission as crucial as this one before "Seven months or so. I'm still pretty clueless."

If the older woman heard her quiver, she didn't mention it. "Clueless? You wouldn't be involved in this if you were the typical, clueless new recruit. There must be something special about you."

Vanessa stared out of the window intently, unsure how much she wanted to share with the other agent. "I guess you could say that."

"I've been informed about it," Romanoff said quietly. "So you don't need to be so careful. Although caution is always a good thing, you can trust that I won't do anything to you."

"I hope my skills can be of service," Vanessa murmured in reply.

The Quinjet broke through the cloud cover. Steve walked over to the windshield of the craft and looked down at the glowing expanse of lights that was Stuttgart, Germany.

"He's over there," said Romanoff, taking a hand off the controls to point to an open space in front of a large building, probably a museum. "I'll drop you off right over it, get him by surprise."

Vanessa frowned when she saw all the biological signatures the dashboard monitor was displaying. "A lot of civilians," she pointed out. "We'll have to be pretty careful."

"Got it," said Steve, turning on his helmet radio. Vanessa hit a button and the larger doors at the back of the Quinjet unlocked with a faint beep. Another button and they slid open just as the aircraft soared over the square, Captain America jumping out of the moving plane without so much as a second of hesitation.

The metallic sound of a projectile deflecting off of a shield crackled through the Quinjet's speakers.

"You know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everyone else," came Cap's voice. "We ended up disagreeing."

There was a brief pause before Loki's smooth tones sounded in response. "The soldier. A man out of time."

Steve scoffed. "I'm not the one who's out of time."

Romanoff steered the Quinjet around the square, which was filled with panicked civilians, and positioned the aircraft to hover right behind Steve. For the first time, Vanessa saw their enemy with her own eyes.

Loki was tall and pale, clad in leather and metal armour. He wore a horned headdress of sort and carried the same scepter that he did when he first stepped out of the portal in the PEGASUS footage.

It was intimidating, yes, but what really unsettled Vanessa was the way that her senses were going haywire with the amount of power she felt, at so close a proximity.

The impression Vanessa got from him was more potent and dangerous than anything she had ever experienced. Energy so cold that it was almost scalding, so wildly out of control that it felt overwhelming. It made her hair stand on end.

The scepter he held exuded a different type of power ー ancient and mysterious and seemingly infinite. Even from far away, it seemed to reach out to her, seemed to graze over her skin like a gentle, almost inviting breeze. Whether or not the god noticed it, the scepter's ambience seemed to leach into his.

"Loki." Romanoff commanded through the mic, "Drop the weapon and stand down."

The only response they received was blast of blue energy from the gem set into the scepter.

"How rude." Romanoff pulled on the joystick hard, steering the Quinjet out of the way just in time as Steve flung his shield at the god.

"There are more than one of him," Vanessa observed with a frown as Romanoff straightened the Quinjet again. They all gave off the same frosty aura as Loki, but fainter and less cogent. "I think they're illusions."

"We can shoot one of them and try," Romanoff offered. "But we should wait until all the civilians have cleared out."

Vanessa knew that there was an easier way to find out and was about to try it when AC/DC's "Shoot to Thrill" suddenly exploded from the speakers. Over the loud music, a deep male voice laughed.

"Agent Romanoff, did you miss me?"

Another presence came onto Vanessa's radar ー metallic and powerful and thrumming to the beat of the music.

Iron Man, in his famous red and gold suit, touched down on the square below them.

"Make your move, Reindeer Games," he said, pointing what seemed like every piece of weaponry the suit had at Loki. The god's armour melted away and he put up his hands in what was obviously surrender. "Good move."

Romanoff barked a laugh. "Stark," she said, almost fondly. "What a drama queen."

* * *

"Said anything?" Fury's voice rang out through Romanoff's headset amidst a low clap of thunder.

"Not a word," she responded, frowning. And for good reason ー the skies were clear. The thunder was coming out of nowhere.

A louder rumble drowned out the director's response.

As they headed back to the Helicarrier with their black-haired prisoner in tow, Vanessa couldn't help but feel apprehensive. With that scepter, he easily took out a dozen armed SHIELD operatives alone. He was holding out fine against just Steve, who seemed to share Vanessa's sentiment.

"I don't like it," he muttered behind her, barely audible above the humming of the engines.

"What, Rock of Ages giving up so easily?" asked Tony Stark, who leaned casually against the wall of the jet, suited but unhelmeted. He had managed to give Loki a second nickname only minutes after the first; it was a somewhat impressive feat.

"I don't remember it being ever that easy," said Steve, shaking his head. "This guy packs a wallop."

"Still, you are pretty spry, for an older fellow," Stark commented, provocation plain in his words. "What's your thing? Pilates?"

"What?"

"It's like calisthenics. You might have missed a couple of things, you know, doing time as a Capsicle."

"Fury didn't tell me he was calling you in." Steve's subtle emphasis wasn't the only indicator of aggression; Vanessa could feel the tensions between them rise, their respective ambiences grating against each other. And a little distance away from that, Loki's sharp, cold energy signature cut through the air like a knife.

Stark shrugged. "Yeah, there are a lot of things Fury doesn't tell you."

Abruptly, a blinding bolt of lightning flashed in front of the jet, followed by the loudest clap of thunder yet. The craft shook violently in the turbulence.

"Where is this _coming_ from?" Romanoff asked, exasperation clear in her voice. The hairs on Vanessa's forearms stood on end as she realized what she was sensing ー there was an energy signature in the sky, flying after them. It was an acrid, scorching feeling, almost the exact opposite to Loki's in nature but the same in potency.

Something was on its way.

She hit the button on the dashboard to activate the Quinjet's radar. As it scanned, she heard Steve taunt Loki, "What's the matter? Scared of a little lightning?"

"I'm not overly fond of what follows."

Loki spoke normally for the first time, and Vanessa was surprised how tame it sounded. Mild, reserved ー nothing like the madman down in the square.

She swivelled around in her chair, facing the three men. "That's more than just lightning. Someone's coming. Or _something_."

For a moment, Loki's eyes flitted to her in curiosity, confirming her suspicions. He knew what it was and the question for the rest of them was: _Is the newcomer an ally or a foe_?

Vanessa slipped her Glock out of its holster just as the whole jet rocked, hit by a blinding flash of light. She sprang from her seat, weapon loaded, while Romanoff straightened the Quinjet.

Stark hit a button on one wall of the aircraft and opened the back doors of the Quinjet. Just as the ramp extended out into the storm, a figure landed on the metal with a gust of wind, huge and muscular and imposing. Vanessa didn't even have time to fire off a warning shot before the newcomer grabbed Loki by the throat and left.

She blinked.

 _What the hell?_

"Now there's that guy," Stark groaned.

"Another Asgardian?" asked Romanoff, glancing back from the pilot's seat.

Steve looked just as mystified. "Think the guy's a friendly?"

"Doesn't matter," said Stark. "If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract's lost."

He strode to the ramp and prepared to jump off in pursuit.

"Wait, Stark, we need a plan of attack!" called Steve, putting on his own helmet.

Stark snorted, a strangely metallic sound through the barrier of his armor. "I have a plan. Attack."

He jumped out of the jet.

"I'd sit this one out, Cap," said Romanoff as she noticed Steve grab a parachute.

He was busy fastening the strap to his suit. "I don't see how I can."

"These guys come from legends," she argued. "They're basically gods."

Steve's next statement almost made Vanessa snicker, despite the dire situation. "There's only one God, ma'am, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that."

He jumped out of the jet.

Romanoff shook her head with a huff of amusement. "I'm resisting the urge to roll my eyes and say ' _boys_.'"

"Well, it would be fitting." Vanessa gave a low snort of laughter before turning to the dash to close the rear doors. "There's a clearing about two hundred metres west. Let's land there."

* * *

Vanessa was unfortunately underdressed for Europe in early spring, wearing only a thin jacket. The cool night air of the mountains hit her like a whip as she stepped off of the Quinjet ramp. Usually, the chill would feel normal to her, but in those circumstances she felt as if she was surrounded by Loki's taunting presence. She shivered slightly, before all thoughts of the cold were pushed away from her mind by the huge surge of energy coming from twelve o'clock.

"Are they fighting?" she asked herself incredulously. Romanoff appeared at her left shoulder just as a loud, metallic clang echoed through the woods.

"Then we'll have to break it up," she said casually, flicking on a bright flashlight and seeming altogether unfazed by the situation. Vanessa admired her level-headedness, which was no doubt a product of her experience. "You coming?"

"Yeah -" Vanessa frowned, suddenly aware of the cutting cold of Loki's aura like a beacon on the mountainside. "They've left the prisoner unattended."

"What?" Romanoff asked sharply. "Where? How do you know?"

"Not too far from here," said Vanessa, darting back into the Quinjet to grab a pair of handcuffs. "I don't have time to explain, but I can sense things. Anyway, I'll take care of it. Break up the fight."

Romanoff hesitated. "He's a god. Are you sure you'll be okay on your own?"

"He's not going anywhere right now, even though he could easily just fly away or something, which leads me to believe that he doesn't want to," said Vanessa, desperately hoping that she was making a correct assumption. If not, she would probably die. From what she saw of his skills, he didn't need a scepter to take her out.

"I think it'll be fine." She swallowed, the words more to convince herself than anyone else.

The older agent pondered it for a moment longer before nodding and sprinting off in the direction of the dispute. As soon as she was out of sight, Vanessa inhaled deeply and closed her eyes.

When they opened again, she knew they glowed with silver light. Her vision was blurry for a moment as she tried to calm the nerves that were interfering with her performance. _Remember your training, Vanessa. You can do it._

After another second, her sight cleared.

The world around her fractured and unfocused, before acuminating into bright lucidity. Every movement, the smallest detail ー all clearer to her than the night sky. She felt the familiar rush of exhilaration that accompanied her active ability replace her anxiety and almost grinned to herself, the situation notwithstanding.

 _Ready._

With the aid of her enhanced optics, Vanessa navigated soundlessly through the woods, arriving at the foot of the small cliff where Loki's energy lay at rest. She drew her weapon, despite knowing that it wouldn't be much use. She'd seen the footage ー the guy had taken a bullet to the face and emerged unscathed. The very thought made her want to turn back, sprint for the relative safety of the Quinjet, but it was her mission.

It was her mission, even if her job description clearly stated 'counter-terrorism' and never included 'apprehending otherworldly deities.'

She slowly climbed over the rocks, coming up behind the god cautiously.

She was about to tell him to put his hands up when he laughed.

Her fingers tightened around her gun, her heart rate rising rapidly.

"Trying to sneak up on me?" he said, turning to face her. For a second, his gaze met hers and an unmistakable shadow of surprise flickered across his features. Vanessa knew what he must have been thinking, and he voiced those thoughts to confirm her theory. "Those are interesting eyes, for a Midgardian."

She ignored his comment and tried her best to keep her voice level in the presence of a god when she replied, "Sir, I'll need you to put your hands up."

Loki just laughed again, before raising his hands over his head in compliance. As Vanessa carefully moved closer to him, reaching for the metal handcuffs she had clipped to her belt, she couldn't help but think that everything was going accordingly to plan ー _his_ plan.

Then they both jumped. A sudden shockwave coming from below them toppled trees and cracked stone. Heat lapped at Vanessa's face. Her earpiece crackled with Romanoff's voice.

"I think they're done now," she said dryly. "Got the prisoner?"

Vanessa unclipped the handcuffs and glanced at Loki, who raised his eyebrows in anticipation. "Yes," she said into her tiny radio. "Got him."


	3. Mischief and Mocha

**Once again, thanks to everyone who has reviewed, favourited, and followed! The feedback has been very helpful. This chapter contains a few perspective switches - they're not specifically indicated by anything more than the normal lines that I use to indicate timeskips. Please tell me if they're unclear. Thanks, guys!**

* * *

 _"Success in warfare is gained by carefully accommodating ourselves to the enemy's purpose."_

 _\- Sun Tzu; The Art of War_

* * *

The briefing room was filled with a strained reticence as they all huddled around the surveillance screen, which displayed a pacing Fury and an amused Loki.

"How desperate am I?" Fury was saying. "You threaten my world with war. You steal a force that you can't hope to control.

"You talk about peace, yet you kill 'cause it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."

Fury's words would have intimidated anyone, especially with the threatening look that accompanied them. Loki, however, was wholly undaunted.

"Ooh, it burns you to come so close," he taunted. "To have the Tesseract, to have unlimited power. And for what? A warm light for all mankind to share, and then to be reminded what real power is."

Fury just smiled. "Well, you let me know if 'real power' wants a magazine or something."

Loki looked straight into the camera as the director left, as if feeling their watchful eyes. The god smirked, and the monitor went black. For a while, nobody in the room spoke as they digested Loki's words and tried to decipher the meaning behind them.

Vanessa's mind was whirring with ideas and interpretations, feeling much calmer than before and quite at home in her area of expertise. But she needed more information to come up with anything of use.

The microphone on her shirt collar buzzed and Fury's voice reverberated close to her ear. "Agent Liang, whenever you're ready. I'm heading over now."

"Received, I'll go in a few minutes," she replied, and turning to Thor, she asked, "Sir, Mister Odinson, can I speak to you about your brother?"

Earlier, the Asgardian appeared to have come to some unspoken agreement with Iron Man and Captain America, becoming their ally. Vanessa had no idea what happened, exactly but she was grateful that it did. An powerful deity on their side to combat another powerful deity seemed fitting.

He appeared to come out of a state of thoughtfulness and nodded slowly. "Yes, of course, Miss Liang. You can call me Thor."

She beamed. "And you can feel free to call me Vanessa. Anyway ー can I ask you what you know about his motivations? Why Loki would want to rule Earth, why he needs the Tesseract?"

"Loki has an army, known as the Chitauri," said Thor. "They're not of Asgard or any world known. They will win him the earth, in exchange, I suspect, for the Tesseract."

His answer immediately sparked a discussion amongst the room's occupants. She let it unfold, quietly contemplating the information.

"An army?" Steve asked incredulously. "From outer space?"

Vanessa thought much the same. None of her training had ever even addressed the idea that there could be an interstellar threat, much less prepared her for it. However, she felt strangely collected, as if this revelation was so odd, so unbelievable that she couldn't even begin to feel worried about it. Or maybe it was because the danger wasn't immediate, only looming on the horizon. Whatever the case, she was glad for it, because a calm mind was far better than one that was not.

"So Loki's building another portal," Banner realized. "That's what he needs Erik Selvig for."

Recognition flashed across Thor's face as he furrowed his brow. "Selvig?"

"He's an astrophysicist."

The god of thunder looked away, his expression stony with suppressed anger and concern. "He's a friend."

"Loki has him under some kind of spell," Romanoff filled in, and her voice was filled with barely concealed worry when she said, "Along with one of ours."

There was a brief moment of silence before Steve resumed with, "I wanna know why Loki let us capture him. He's not leading an army from here."

Banner shook his head. "I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats; you could smell crazy on him."

"Have care how you speak," snapped Thor. "Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he's my brother."

Romanoff scoffed, "He killed eighty people in two days."

"He's adopted."

Vanessa felt the grating tension in the room and cleared her throat. "Can I ask you another question, Thor? It's a little bit personal, and if you don't want to share, feel free not to."

He tilted his head. "I'll hear it."

"What happened between you and Loki?"

There was a beat of silence before Thor answered, "Loki always felt overshadowed by me when we were younger. He believed that our father loved favoured me. Ever since the throne of Asgard fell to me, he has coveted it, becoming bitter. Misguided."

"So, he's like a kid throwing a tantrum?" Stark walked into the room, accompanied by Coulson and Maria Hill, the deputy director of SHIELD. "Wants attention?"

"I suppose you could put it that way," Thor said with a shrug. "Do you have anything else you would like to know?"

Vanessa nodded. "One more question. Can you tell me about Loki's abilities?"

"Loki is a sorcerer, never really interested in the traditional warrior arts," he answered, sounding almost distasted. "A conjurer of objects and illusions."

She pursed her lips, the only sign that she was uneasy with the unexpected similarity between her and their prisoner.

"He's a trickster with a silver-tongue, and manipulative. I never could beat him at mind games."

 _Manipulative_.

"Manipulative," Vanessa repeated, glancing at each person in the room in turn. "I think we'd do well to remember that."

* * *

Fury arrived at the briefing room after navigating through the maze of corridors from the detainment level back to the bridge. He scanned the room with his good eye, gaze landing on Vanessa. "A little longer than a few minutes, Agent Liang."

"My apologies, Director," said the girl with a quick dip of her head. "I'll head there right now."

"Good. He's not going to be an easy one."

She met his eyes in understanding and brushed past him to exit the room.

Fury walked over to the screen where they had viewed his conversation with Loki and turned it on, an image of the god of mischief once again flickering on its surface. "If you guys want, you should watch this. Get to know your teammate, a little."

Steve inched closer, curious. "What do you mean?"

"If any of you didn't already know, Agent Liang is an interrogation specialist," he explained. "She has an interesting style. I'd be hard-pressed to even call it interrogation, but I do because it yields the same results."

"Is that why you recruited an eighteen-year-old girl?" Steve asked, his voice almost accusing. It wasn't the first time that he voiced the 'she's too young to be caught up in all this' opinion, and Fury had a feeling that it wouldn't be the last, either.

He trained his eye on the other man, feeling the need to rise to SHIELD's defense. His own defense. "She came to us, Captain."

Steve huffed, unconvinced. "Should've waited a bit, at least."

"I know you're concerned, but believe me," said Fury. "Turning away someone with resolve and a skill set like hers would have been very difficult."

Fury turned away in a declaration that the topic was closed. He felt correct, despite the Captain's accusations. Steve hadn't been there to see her application, her interview, and her first field test. He hadn't been there when she first revealed her potential. If he had, he wouldn't be questioning it now.

 _She was something special, alright._

He looked at the screen and it was still only Loki.

"Liang, you better not be making a detour to get coffee," he growled into his mic, trying his best to sound unimpressed instead of bemused. A second later, her laugh rang out in response.

"Sorry, Director," she said. "Don't fire me."

* * *

Loki recognized her presence before seeing her. The weak little spark that characterized Midgardians, although hers was laced with something else, something that he couldn't quite place. It was of little concern to him, though; he knew from their encounter on the mountainside that she was just another opposing pawn he needed to outmaneuver, and he would do so easily.

Slowly, dramatically, he turned in his cell with a faint grin on his face. "What do we have here?"

The girl stood on the metal catwalk outside of his cell with her silver stare trained on him, unfazed by his casual mockery. "I'm sorry for not doing so earlier, but please allow me to introduce myself," she said calmly, unlike the forced composure she upheld during their first meeting. He could easily see why ー with a foot of reinforced glass between them, he wasn't much of a threat to her anymore. "My name is Vanessa Liang."

"Interesting that you should come visit me," he mused, crossing the distance between them in a few quick strides and leaning in close to the limits of his prison. He looked at his visitor in scrutiny. She held a steaming cup in her left hand, her non-dominant hand, if he remembered correctly. She had used it to support her gun while her right was at the trigger. She was rather slight, with narrow shoulders and slim hips. She had well-placed and distinctive features ー not unattractive, but none of that mattered, for Loki was always drawn back to her eyes.

They were silver and unsettling, bearing in his mind a strong resemblance to Heimdall's gold ones. Like the gatekeeper's, her eyes glowed faintly and seemed to look at him and through him at the same time. In short? He disliked them, but he was curious about them.

"I take it that you were expecting someone else, and not so soon," she replied, her voice nonchalant.

She was correct, and Loki took note of her attentiveness, realizing that she was likely sent to extract information from him. Carefully, he matched her tone. "Perhaps. Why do _you_ come, then? To mock or gloat? You didn't seem like the type. Then, to interrogate, perhaps?"

Vanessa took a sip from her drink, her sterling irises looking at him intently over the rim of the cup. "No, none of that," she said, after swallowing. "Just to talk."

"Oh?" He raised his eyebrows. "About what?"

"Not much in particular." She shrugged. "You look like you could use an engaging conversation. Or maybe you just need coffee. Want some?"

She gestured to the paper vessel in her hand. The word 'coffee' was vaguely familiar to him, thrown around quite often by the two he had taken, Selvig and Barton. They had always seemed to want it. "It's that bitter Midgardian thing, yes? If you could get it to me, I'll take some."

"I'll pour it through the ventilation shaft," Vanessa offered, breaking into a grin that almost surprised Loki with how real the smile appeared. Maybe it was a gesture to relax his guard, but its genuinity only made him more wary. He was more than used to being lied to. "I heard that you're a conjurer. Could you conjure yourself a cup or something?"

"Perhaps," he replied, hands behind his back. "If I have one stored away. I can't be sure."

The colour of her almond eyes appeared to shift in shade with her delightment and turn into something brighter, more reflective. "Do you have a pocket dimension where you can store objects?" she asked. "I'm jealous. What's in it?"

Loki found himself mildly amused by her engrossment. "This and that," he said, being deliberately vague as to not satisfy her curiousity. "And I just checked ー no cup, unfortunately."

"That _is_ unfortunate," she agreed. "Guess this mocha's all mine, then."

He considered putting their pointless banter to an end. After all, he had a purpose. While it would have been better served through that woman named Natasha Romanoff, he could enact it through this Vanessa Liang just as easily.

 _But it will still be a while before Barton would be ready to assist me with my escape_ , he told himself. _Perhaps this can carry on for a little longer, if only for entertainment._

"Mocha?" he asked, feigning interest. "You said that was coffee."

"It is," she said, taking another sip. "Mocha is a variant of coffee. Well, a variant of a variant, if you want to get specific."

He waved her on. "Go ahead, then. Enlighten me."

"It's a chocolate-flavoured derivative of a caffé latte," she answered earnestly. "Which is essentially an espresso but with steamed milk added. It's good."

"I can only imagine."

"I'm sorry for your loss. What do you drink in Asgard?"

"Water."

"Beyond that."

"Alcohol." Loki suddenly and inexplicably recalled all the nights of meaningless revelry with Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three. The abrupt memory triggered by the conversation prompted him to cut it short. "I think I've humoured you for long enough. What are your true intentions?"

Vanessa blinked her lucid eyes. "I told you already, I just want to talk."

Loki was a master of lies, and the fact that he could not detect any falsity in her statement was disturbing. She was either bypassing his lie-detecting faculties or telling the truth. Both of those possibilities were disquieting, but he settled for the first, the slightly less so of the two.

"Don't treat me like a fool," he hissed, determined to uncover her ruse. "That man, Fury ー he claimed that your world has been plunged into a dire state of risk. And I'm just to believe that you approach me just to discuss something as mundane as beverages?"

"You're right," she admitted, unperturbed. "This _is_ mundane. We can talk about something else, if you would like. Why don't you choose a topic? If it's any extra incentive, I swear to answer any questions that you have honestly."

Loki had to admit that he was taken aback by her offer, and was silent for several moments as he unravelled it. She was telling the truth this time ー he knew it. But the answer to the question of _why_ still eluded him.

"You drive a bold bargain," he finally said. "You must be plotting something, or maybe you are just hopelessly daft."

At this, Vanessa smiled. "It's true that I want to test the water, or so to say. Just because I'm here to hold a casual conversation doesn't mean that I don't recognize the fact that we are still opponents. But I'm confident that this talk and my honesty will not betray my cause."

"A game, then," he guessed. "A game in which information is the gamble."

"I didn't think of that way," she said, inclining her head. "But if you enjoy this sort of thing, so be it."

Loki steepled his fingers at the prospect of an intellectual business, trying to hide the fact that he was, in fact, pleased with the opportunity. Back then, Thor had never been much of a challenge, and Frigga rarely had the time. The thought of his mother prickled at him, but he pushed it aside – sentiment was weakness, and that part of his life was gone forever from the moment he lead the Frost Giants into Asgard.

"Then your offer is accepted. Can I begin?"

"Of course."

"I want you to tell me about your eyes," he said promptly. "I'm sure you've realized that I've noticed that they are not like the other Midgardians, and I have to admit, I'm intrigued."

As if on cue, the silver of her irises flashed. "Can you phrase that as a more specific question? There's a lot I could tell you, and I daresay not all of them you actually want to hear."

Loki chuckled a little. "Already realizing the implications of your venture? Fine. What can your eyes see?"

She tilted her head to the left slightly, clearly intent on dodging the question. "I can see you standing in a cell."

"Oh, please," he said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. "I know that the ability residing in those eyes of yours are the only reason that you're involved in any of this. The only reason that Fury keeps someone like you around. So tell me, what can you see that others do not?"

Vanessa ignored the pointed comment at her worth, much to his disappointment. "I don't see everything like your gatekeeper does," she started. He hadn't expected her to know about Heimdall, much less draw a comparison between herself and the guardian of the Bifröst. It was as if she knew of his earlier thoughts. "But I see in more detail and depth. This detail then helps me see to the heart of matters. I suppose I see more than what's on the physical surface."

Then Loki got a little bit more than he had bargained for.

"You asked me about my eyes and what I can see? I can see what you've seen written all over your face, and tell me if I'm correct to say, 'too much.'"

For a split second, the silence between them was almost deafening as a single thought, shocked and disoriented, played in his head in response to her statement.

 _You are._

"Your mortal mind wouldn't be able to fathom it." His voice was venomous, steeped with a wild rush of emotions. Here was an arrogantly perceptive Midgardian, making baseless assumptions about him and pretending that she could comprehend what he had seen. "It is beyond your wildest imaginations."

 _Sanctuary isn't much of a sanctuary for mortals, and certainly not for the faint of heart._

The pain, the vulnerability ー she couldn't possibly imagine what it was like.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, eyes large and rounded, as if in concern. "I didn't mean to trespass."

The apology was unexpected (a dangerous number of things in this conversation were unexpected), but he accepted it with a single, terse nod, using the time the small gesture granted him to rebuild his guard.

He had underestimated her, but the game could still be won.

"If I told you that I could help, would you tell me about it?" she asked gently. There was nothing prying or demanding about her tone, just a soft offer. She was lying this time, he knew – she had no intent to actually help him, but perhaps to repair the wall she had accidentally breached by making kinder conversation. "You haven't seen much mortal imagination, I gather."

"You humans are unable to see past the littlest of things," he scoffed, the vehemence in his voice doing well to cover up his uneasiness. "And fooled by the simplest of lies."

"You mean to say we're petty and gullible?" Vanessa quirked her eyebrows, seemingly entertained. With the simple gesture, she easily curbed the mounting tension in the air, leaving Loki with an unpleasant sense of powerlessness. She may have been answering his question, but the conversation was completely in her hands.

He was losing their mind game, he realized, and it almost scared him.

"I couldn't agree more," she went on, a hint of humour creeping into her tone, which somehow also carried an odd sense of foreboding. He quickly found out why: "But trust me when I say that humans can have a wild, wild imagination. For example, you gave birth to an eight-legged stallion named Sleipnir."

The outrageousness of her statement did wonders to snap him out of his state of tumult. "What in the Nine Realms? No, Sleipnir was-"

"Point proven," she said, sounding maddeningly satisfied with his reaction. "If I have time later, I'll tell you about the rest of your 'offspring.'" She made gestures in the air with her fingers, apparently to convey sarcasm.

"The rest?"

The expression on his face must have been priceless, because she laughed, although the contentment didn't quite reach her eyes.

"I'm needed elsewhere, now," said Vanessa, her voice still filled with what seemed to be a mixture of amusement and thoughtfulness. "You know, Thor told me that you were bitter and misguided, but I find you quite enjoyable to talk to."

"Barton only told me about your eyes, and not that you could be insufferable," Loki shot back, but with no real malice. He couldn't find it in himself, not in such a state of perplexity.

She smiled one last time and turned away, her steps seemingly calculated to click and echo unnervingly on the metal catwalk. He watched her retreating figure until the doors of his prison slid shut, staring at the black hair that swayed back and forth, trying to discern what was in her head.

He clenched his hands in frustration, unable to tell how much he'd given away. He knew that she wouldn't have left empty-handed.


	4. Before the Storm

**Sorry for the extremely long delay in updating! Things have been a little bit busy. Anyway, thanks again to everyone who has reviewed, favourite, and followed! Enjoy!**

 **And I don't remember if I've put a customary disclaimer in this story yet so here it is: I own nothing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe - heck, the franchise pratically owns me at this point, considering the amount of effort I just threw into watching Black Panther on premiere night (it was great, by the way). The Avengers in all their glory belong to Marvel Studios. Done.**

* * *

Vanessa rubbed her upper arms, still feeling the god of mischief's chilling aura on her skin, feeling his piercing blue gaze trained on hers. She was strangely drained, and despite the relaxed front she did her best to put up, the conversation had been equal parts amusing and disturbing.

 _Just what was going on in his mind?_

The elevator doors slid open as she finished piecing together what she could. She dropped her empty paper cup into a nearby trashcan before proceeding to the Helicarrier bridge, where the rest of the team still waited, with the exception of Hill and Coulson, who had undoubtedly gone back to running the standard operations of the flying fortress.

"Why are you back so soon, Agent Liang?" Fury asked her the second she set foot into the room. "It was barely ten minutes."

"I have what we need," she said simply. "Or most of it. You should have been able to tell, Director. You _did_ train me personally."

In reality, she'd lied to Loki because the conversation was going somewhere she wasn't quite sure she was ready to process.

Severe trauma was never really her thing to deal with.

"I trained you in interrogation," he said dryly. "Not 'making small talk and then somehow pulling the entirety of human nature from it.' _That's_ all your own. Besides, they were too busy laughing their asses off from the moment you mentioned coffee."

"Well, it _was_ funny," Stark said defensively, standing up and walking to her. She realized that he was staring at her face closely. "Loki kept asking about your eyes, but they look pretty normal to me."

Vanessa realized that she would have been standing with her back to the camera, and therefore unable to see her eyes. She only hesitating a brief moment before allowing liquid silver to flood her irises. In an instant, every detail on Stark's face stood out as clearly as his features did.

"Still normal?"

There was no harm in displaying her power to her allies, was there? Not when she'd already revealed half her tricks to her opponent.

Stark flinched at the sight. "Nope. Not normal. Is that human? Are you human? Should I really be surprised?"

Banner and Steve wore similar expressions.

Vanessa shrugged and tilted her head at Thor in indication. "Not with a god in the room."

"Those eyes remind me of Heimdall's," commented the god of thunder. "He's the gatekeeper of Asgard, and he sees everything. Are your eyes like that, too?"

"She deliberately said that they weren't," Stark interjected. "Did you even _watch_ the footage?"

" _You_ watched the footage?" Romanoff looked skeptical. "You seemed about done by the time the mocha lecture started."

Vanessa held up a hand to put the brakes on the bickering before it began. "I have facilitated eidetic memory and I can see more clearly and in more detail than the typical human," she clarified. "Little things like micro expressions, I can detect easily. That's why I do so much of SHIELD's interrogation work. That, and I have some degree of extrasensory perception."

There was one other thing that her eyes could do, but she prefered to keep _that_ one a secret, for now. It was by far the most abnormal of them all, and she'd heard enough times from her late mother that a magician _never_ revealed. Never revealed prematurely, anyway.

The director knew about it, but he wasn't about to bring it up. He understood how keeping it hidden could help her.

"Enough about me," she said, silencing the question that was no doubt hanging on Stark's lips by a thread. She let the silver fade from her eyes and her vision dial back down to normal. "We need to talk about Loki."

"About time," Fury muttered under his breath, having silently observed the exchange from the corner. He almost seemed to step out of the shadows again now that the conversation had returned to relevancy. "So, Agent Liang, what did you find?"

She filed through her memory and identified the first moment of importance.

 _"Interesting that you should come visit me," he said._

 _There was a soft emphasis on 'you', and flash of well-concealed surprise: eyebrows barely raised, mouth slightly ajar. If it weren't for her ability, there was no way she would have caught it._

"He wasn't expecting my visit," she stated. "He was expecting someone else."

"Any idea who that might be?" Steve queried. It was the first time that he had spoken since she'd returned, and he sounded rather resigned. Vanessa made a mental note to talk to him, later.

"I can only speculate," she admitted. "There are two possibilities ー Thor, and Agent Romanoff."

"Me?" the two asked in unison.

She nodded. "For Thor, it's natural that Loki might expect him to visit. You're brothers. There should be some lingering sentiment, even if it's only on one side. As for Agent Romanoff, he knows you're an interrogation specialist. From Agent Barton, most likely. He _didn't_ know that much about me, so that's why he hadn't expected my visit."

"And how is knowing this helpful?" Banner asked. He had been so quiet that Vanessa had almost forgotten his presence in the room ー almost.

"Loki already has his escape planned."

"Already?" Stark was disbelieving. "He's only been here, what, half an hour?"

Vanessa pulled up an image of the Asgardian in her mind, reviewing the details carefully. Once she was certain, she began her explanation.

"He was relaxed, bored, and a little impatient when I approached him," she started. "Jumped at the offer of mental stimulation. This should mean that he already has his priorities out of the way."

Steve seemed skeptical. "How can you be sure?"

"I can't." She shrugged. "But he didn't look preoccupied at all when I talked to him. He was… ready. Anticipant."

Fury crossed his arms. "I don't suppose you know how he plans to escape."

"Again, two possibilities," said Vanessa, holding up two fingers. "He escapes, or someone comes to rescue him.

"The first is unlikely. To escape that cell, he would either have to somehow manipulate someone into opening it for him, figure out how to open it from the inside by some miracle, or manage to fit through the ventilation shaft. Which is barely big enough to pour fluid through, let alone fit any part of a person."

"And the othe-" Romanoff began, before cutting herself off in realization. "...Oh."

"Exactly, Agent Romanoff," Vanessa said grimly. " It's more likely that he'll use his control over Agent Barton and the other SHIELD operatives, who know the Helicarrier inside and out."

"They'll have to get past security, first," Fury dissented. "Loki doesn't seriously think that this could work, does he?"

"He doesn't, but does he have any other way?" Vanessa questioned. She was met with no answer, as she expected. "No, so he'll need a diversion. That's what I don't know. What he plans to use to distract us while he makes his escape."

Romanoff stood immediately, her blue eyes blazing with determination. "I'm on it."

Fury gave her a single nod and the agent practically sprinted out of the room, red hair bobbing. "Anything else, Agent Liang?"

Vanessa shook her head. "This is everything useful."

At the back of her mind, something unknown still nagged persistently. His motives.

Fury clasped his hands together, signifying the conclusion of the meeting. "Alright, then, let's get to it. Mr. Stark, Dr. Banner ー can you two perhaps work on tracking the cube? The sooner we find it, the better."

Stark made for the door. "Shall we play, doctor?"

"Let's play some," Banner agreed, and the two left.

"Anything for us to do, Director?" Steve asked.

"Just stay on standby," he replied. "We'll see about it when Agent Romanoff comes back with her results."

Then he left the room, his trenchcoat sweeping behind him. After a few moments, Thor followed, muttering something about looking around the Helicarrier and inspecting the 'Midgardian magic.' The briefing room now silent once more, with just Vanessa and Steve occupying the small space. Noticing that the super soldier was wearing a difficult expression, she sat down on one of the wheeled chairs next to him.

"What's bothering you?" she asked quietly.

Steve looked her in the eye for a long moment, as if waiting for them to change colour. Vanessa was almost tempted fulfill that expectation. "I don't know. It's ridiculous, but I'm almost offended that you kept-" he waved an indicative hand at her face - " _this_ from me."

"Ah," she said rather lamely, unsure how to approach the problem. "I didn't think it was necessary… and it's not something I want to advertise."

Steve sighed. "I know, and that's why I said that my offense was ridiculous. I guess… I sort of believed you to be a link to everything normal."

Vanessa bit her lower lip, without a response. Normally, she was articulate and eloquent, but she didn't even know what to think in response to the unexpected role, much less what to say.

 _I'm not normal, never have been_ , she told herself. _Just because someone thought I was changes nothing._

He cleared his throat, breaking the increasingly suffocating quiet. "So, uh… how did you… get like this?"

"I have no idea, aside from that it's heritable," she responded honestly, glad that it was an easily answered question. "My mother had the ability, and so did her father, apparently. She told me that he always said that we were descended from aliens."

Steve blinked at her. "You're kidding."

"I'm not." She wasn't. In addition to that, her mother had also told her that the stories claimed that people of their lineage once had tremendous powers. But over time, with the dilution of the bloodline, the abilities became more and more limited, until they were basically only ocular.

 _"If the story's real, then the blood is strong with you, Qiqi," said her mother, calling her by the endearing nickname she loved so much. "I hope you'll make good use of it. Find a purpose."_

"SHIELD must've been really happy to get its hands on you," Steve finally responded, after realizing that Vanessa was being one hundred percent truthful. "With alien powers and all."

His voice was startlingly bitter and disapproving. It took a few seconds for Vanessa to pinpoint why. He was concerned about her.

"I chose to join SHIELD," she said firmly, the conviction plain in her voice. Of all choices she'd made in her life, joining the agency was one of the few she had been absolutely set on and had yet to look back upon with regret. "It stands for so much I believe in."

Prevention and intelligence, the perfect banes to the things that took almost everything from her ー terrorism and violence.

"You're barely an adult, Vanessa," Steve argued. "I can't see why you should be involved in all of _this_."

 _"Protection," said Fury. "That's what SHIELD is all about. Are you ready for it?"_

 _"As ready as I'll ever be," she responded confidently. She searched her heart and mind, and there was no regret, no apprehension to be found. "This means a lot to me, Director."_

 _"Good." He smiled. "We need more like you."_

"It means a lot to me, Steve," she said, her throat tight with a mixture of pleasant an unpleasant memories; in a moment of impulse, she decided to spill the story. "My mother died in the Macao attacks of 2008. I was fourteen and studying in New York at the time. Later, I heard about SHIELD; it was a chance for me to protect what was left, to avenge my loss, to put my grief to good purpose."

 _"I hope you'll make good use of it. Find a purpose."_

She thought she'd found it with SHIELD.

"I'm sorry." Steve looked genuinely distressed at the revelation. "Now I… can understand the choice you made."

"Thank you," she said, appreciating the fact that he didn't push any more questions.

The recounting of her past left her with a hollow, depleted feeling, as if she were a plush toy that had lost some of its stuffing. The first time, when she told Coulson the same tale at her job interview, it had felt much the same. It didn't mean that she was used to it.

Thankfully, she was spared the need to dwell on any of her past grievances by the urgent voice that crackled through her communication device.

"Loki means to unleash the Hulk," came Romanoff's low tones. "Keep Banner in the lab, I'm on my way. And send Thor as well."

Steve leaped to his feet, and Vanessa mirrored his actions. With wordless agreement, the two of them ran for the laboratory with Vanessa leading them down the near-identical corridors of the Helicarrier. It took about a minute to get from the bridge to the research level, and even before turning the doorknob, she could tell that tensions were high in the lab.

She could feel the irritation in Stark's metallic energy and the annoyance in Banner's contrasted aura, combining in harsh dissonance to confront the abstruse presence that was Nick Fury. Her hand hovered above the handle hesitantly, before Steve decisively clamped down on it and pushed the metal door open.

"Listen, Stark," Fury was saying as they walked in to the brightly lit lab. Judging from the light streaming in from the large window wall, it was already mid-morning. "We're gathering everything related-"

Stark turned a holographic screen around. From just in front of the doorway, Vanessa could see the bright outlines of weapon designs. "I'm sorry, Nick. What were you lying?"

Steve strode into the room, his face creased into a deep frown. "What's this about?"

"Phase Two," said Banner distastefully. "SHIELD's planning on using the Tesseract to create weapons of mass destruction."

Vanessa froze, a few tentative steps into the laboratory, but it wasn't out of surprise.

"Did you know about this, Vanessa?" Steve looked back at her, his expression a mixture of displeasure and disappointment.

She shook her head, which was a partial truth. She didn't _know_ it, but she had prepared herself for the possibility ever since she had overheard the plans for weapons made with the remnants of the Destroyer.

 _"What is this supposed to be?" she confronted Coulson accusingly, showing him the holographic images of what appeared to be bazookas. She had caught wind of the plans while getting coffee that morning ー there were always a few agents who just weren't careful enough. When they left, they left behind a small projection device which she snagged._

I'll give it back, _she promised herself._

 _In response, Coulson pulled her into a nearby briefing room and turned on the sound-proofing technology._

 _"SHIELD wants what's best for the world," he said. "When these gods just came and nearly flattened Puente Antiguo, we realized that we weren't ready for them. What if they come again?"_

And come again they did.

They had not one but _two_ of them on this very craft.

"I didn't know about this," she said slowly. "But I believe that there's good reason."

"There is," said Fury, pointing to the doorway where Romanoff and Thor had only just arrived. "It's him."

Thor looked bewildered. "Me?"

"Last year, Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that levelled a small town," said Fury, repeating what Coulson had told her months ago. "We learned that not only are we not alone, we are also hopelessly and hilariously outgunned."

"My people want nothing but peace with your planet," Thor protested.

"But you're not the only people out there, are you?" Fury asked rhetorically. "And you're not the only threat. The world is filling up with people who can't be matched, who can't be controlled."

"Like you controlled the cube?" Steve looked disgusted at the hypocrisy.

"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies" Thor agreed seriously. "It is a signal to all the realms that the Earth is ready for a higher form of war."

From there, the argument escalated into something uncontrollable and mostly unintelligible. Vanessa tried to finds points at which to interject, to possibly offer a remedy, but there didn't seem to be any openings.

"Excuse me, did we come to _your_ planet to blow stuff up?"

"Are you really all naive?"

"Captain America is on the-"

"I swear to God, Stark-"

"You're on that list?"

"Threatening! I feel threatened!"

It was at that moment that Vanessa realized that something so much worse than just an argument was happening.

They were playing directly into Loki's hand.

A diversion? Even without the Hulk, he was getting it.

And there was a tingling sensation at the base of Vanessa's skull. A caress of energy, ancient and inviting ー

"The scepter," she gasped, whipping around to look at the weapon. Sure enough, it was glowing with a faint, blue light, like it did when it was active and in Loki's grasp. This was enough to turn the whole room's attention to it, and the argument immediately died down.

"Why is it glowing?" asked Romanoff rushing to the stand on which it rested, followed by the rest of the lab's occupants. "What's it doing?"

"We're working on it," said Stark, frantically typing into a holographic screen. Banner was inspecting the weapon closely. Steve, Fury, and Thor stood to the side, waiting anxiously for results.

 _Nothing like a nice little crisis to unite a team, huh?_ thought the more snarky Vanessa. The practical side of the girl, however, was searching.

She swept the room with her senses, grasping the signatures of each person in turn, and being once again taunted by the mystic energy of the scepter. She ignored it and worked her way outward, combing through the dozens of biological impressions in the Helicarrier, from Coulson's light breeze to Hill's stoic solidity. Finally, just outside of the giant aircraft, she found something smaller and much more dangerous.

It was a Quinjet, and it carried the scepter's aura.

Except the scepter was in front of her.

 _Which meant…_

"Agent Hill, can you hear me?" she said into her microphone urgently.

There was a moment of silence before the speaker gave a crack and Hill's voice replied, "Yes, what is it?"

"There's a Quinjet outside the carrier," she told her. "Is it authorized?"

"I'm checking," Hill responded immediately.

Vanessa waited tensely for the deputy director's response. "It's sixsixone Bravo," the woman said. "It wasn't scheduled but it's here for arms to ammunition. What's the matter?"

"I think it's Agent Barton. Loki plans to use him in his escape." Vanessa glanced nervously out of the lab windows and across the bridge. "Can you stop him from coming any closer?"

"I'll see what I can do," Hill promised.

She looked back at her 'teammates,' who had all heard the brief exchange.

"Barton is here?" asked Romanoff, her voice tight. "Are you sure about it?"

"Almost certain," Vanessa replied regretfully. "Dr. Banner, could you perhaps think about removing yourself from this environment? I'm sorry to say that something is about to happen, and we wouldn't want any… surprises."

Banner gave her a cynical look. "Where to? You've already rented out my room."

Fury stepped forward. "The cell was just in case-"

A loud beep from one of the computers interrupted him mid-speech. Stark strode over to it and scrolled through the screen, which displayed an image of the Tesseract.

"Got it," he said.

"Located the Tesseract?" Thor asked, his grip tightening on the hammer he suddenly seemed to have.

"I can get there faster," Stark responded, seeing as the Asgardian seemed to be about ready to smash through the windows and fly away.

Steve crossed muscular arms in obvious disagreement. "Look, all of us-"

"The Tesseract belongs on Asgard," Thor cut across him, snapping, "No human is a match for it."

Stark took one step in the direction of the door, but was promptly stopped by Steve. "You're not going alone."

"You gonna stop me?" The billionaire quirked his eyebrows in scorn.

"Put on the suit, let's find out."

Vanessa realized, with no small amount of exasperation and panic (what do you call a mixture of the two?), that they were ignoring the more pressing matter on hand.

But what could she do?

She had always been reluctant to speak in front of these all-powerful superheroes, elite agents, and _deities_ ; she would never be their equal, never match them in power. Who was she to object to what they thought?

But now she had to, because there was no one else to do it.

"Everyone, please listen," she pleaded, interrupting Stark, who had just opened his mouth. "As we speak, as we _argue_ , we're turning ourselves into our enemy's pawns."

There was a moment of silence as everyone turned to her.

"Remember when we wondered _why_ Loki would let himself get captured?" Her voice was rising now, riding a train of thought that had only just occurred to her. "It's because we're ー _you guys_ are his only opposition. And we've made it so easy for him to tear us apart, because we're doing it for him.

"And even worse, Agent Romanoff said that Loki means to unleash the Hulk," she went on, breathing heavily. "I mean no offense, Doctor, but we all know how catastrophic that could be. I'm not suggesting that we put you into the cell, of course, but we need you to keep the other guy away at all costs, lest this Helicarrier fall out of the sky and kill everyone on it.

"So how do we fix it? For starters, we have to stop arguing with _each other_. Everything else can come after."

A beat of silence.

Fury blinked his one good eye, and was first to break the ensuing hush. "Well, there you have it. Anyone object?"


	5. The First Drops of Rain

**Once again, thanks for everyone who reviewed, followed, and favourited! I apologize for the long wait between chapters, and as always, I hope you enjoy this one!**

* * *

"The Tesseract can wait." Vanessa's voice surprised its owner with its obstinance as it rang out in the unexpected quiet. "Agent Hill is already seeing what she can do about Agent Barton's Quinjet, but we need to take precautions."

"And do those precautions involve locking me up somewhere?" Banner asked wearily. "I'll comply as long as it doesn't involve being anywhere near that maniac."

They all knew who he was talking about. Thor frowned at the jab at his brother's sanity but did not address it; it wasn't the first time the doctor had voiced this opinion.

"Agent Romanoff, can you please escort Dr. Banner to his quarters?" Fury instructed. The redheaded operative nodded and beckoned for Banner to follow her, and together they left the lab.

"I'll head down to Loki's cell," declared Vanessa. "I could use some company."

"I will accompany you," said Thor in his deep, formal tones. "I do need to talk to my-"

An explosion threw him across the room. Threw all of them across the room, actually. A wave of heat licked at Vanessa's ankles as she was tossed into an array of scientific equipment, desperately shielding her face with her hands and forearms. A sharp jolt of pain racked her body as her back connected with a metal cart, sending it careening through the wreckage.

She sat up, coughing through the smoke and debris, and assessed her injuries. She had various cuts and scrapes over the exposed skin on her hands, and bruises were undoubtedly forming along her spine. Thankfully, the injuries stopped there. She stood gingerly, kicking away shattered pieces of glass.

"Is everyone okay?" Steve rasped, swatting away the plumes of dust. "Stark, put on the suit!"

"Yep!" said the billionaire, any signs of the earlier aggression towards the super soldier gone. He scurried out of the lab, Steve assisting him.

A stream of unintelligible communications came through Vanessa's collar radio. She fiddled around with the device until Hill's clear voice crackled sharply through the tiny speaker.

"Number three engine is down! We lose one more engine, we won't be in the air anymore," said the woman grimly. "Someone's gotta get in there and patch that engine."

"Stark, you copy that?" Fury barked into his own communication device. A second later, Stark's voice responded with an affirmative.

"Thor, we have to go find Loki," Vanessa remembered. "Let's go."

"Yes," the Asgardian agreed. "Lead me to him."

She looked from the door to the broken window wall, which lead straight to the open area over top of the bridge. The elevators would have been locked down by this point so jumping from one level to the next would be faster than taking the stairs, so that's what she did.

Her training kicked in as she jumped out of the empty window frame and tucked into a roll to absorb her impact on the metal floor of the Helicarrier bridge. A piece of glass dug into her shoulder, but not enough to break the skin. She heard a shriek of surprise from a nearby female agent as Thor landed heavily next to her, the floor creaking beneath his boots.

She clambered to her feet, the collision still jarring her bones.

"Liang, when you get there, initiate detention lockdown!" Fury yelled from the research level.

"Got it," she called back, pushing into a sprint with the god of thunder close on her heels.

They ran through the Helicarrier halls, many of which were now filled with suffocating smoke, ashes, and frenzied SHIELD agents. Vanessa pulled her collar over the mouth, her eyes silvering in an attempt to see through the clouds of dust.

For a second, her vision turned hazy and disorienting and she almost tripped down the stairs she was attempting to navigate. After a few seconds of hard breathing, it focused and her sight sharpened in definition.

"Almost there," she choked out. There was only one more flight of stairs to cover before they would reach the detainment level, and it took them about ten seconds at their pace.

The chamber that held Loki's glass cell was miraculously free of all soot and debris. Loki stood _outside_ his prison, smirking.

Vanessa stared at the scene, disbelieving. And his image wavered as her mind finally processed the signal that her eyes were trying to send her.

It was an illusion.

"No!" Thor roared, apparently having not come to the same realization as the agent did. He barrelled towards his brother, brandishing Mjölnir.

Vanessa's body, her power, all moved on its own as she instantly erected an illusion of a brick wall in front of Thor, stopping the Asgardian in his tracks. The illusionary Loki dissipated into nothingness as the wall also crumbled, leaving Thor bewildered.

 _Two can play at that game._

"You're an illusionist, too?" asked the real Loki, who was clad in armor and had somehow gotten ahold of the scepter. He was shocked, and was making no effort to conceal it. "And you can see through mine?"

She let a string of profanities run through her mind as the god approached, her vision blurring slightly as her nerves meddled with her abilities' performance. She inhaled deeply, not responding to Loki's questions, waiting for her eyes to refocus.

"Stop this madness, brother," Thor pleaded, having overcome his initial disorientation. "It is not too la-"

Thor was interrupted, for the second (third?) time in the last half hour, this time by a shower of gunfire from a soldier that Vanessa, in her state of panic, hadn't even noticed entered the room. The bullets did little to harm the god, shattering harmlessly against his armor. Even the ones that hit his skin only caused him to roar in annoyance. Watching this, Loki laughed.

"The humans think us immortal," he mused. "They just haven't found ways to kill us yet. But they are quite good at killing each other."

The blue of his eyes flashed correspondingly with the blue in the irises of the mind-controlled soldier. Like that, he turned his weapon on Vanessa instead, and opened fire.

She ducked instinctively, the bullets clanging against the metal walls of the chamber. Rolling behind the control panel for the prison, she drew her own firearm, unsure what use a small pistol was against an assault rifle.

"Vanessa, hide behind me," said Thor, crouching down and shielding her with his armor. She nodded gratefully, her heart pounding in her chest. Her vision spiralled in and out of focus as she desperately tried to calm herself, tried to convince herself that _she wasn't going to die_.

"Oh, Thor, always so soft," Loki taunted. "Protecting a mortal girl?"

He shot a glance at the soldier, who ceased his fire. Vanessa remained crouched behind the control panel, trying her best to quell the tremors running through her body. Beside her, Thor stood, tightening his grip on Mjölnir.

There was a tense moment, when acrid electricity met searing cold, and the brothers charged at each other. With a loud clang, Loki deflected Thor's hammer with his scepter, but the force of the blow sent him flying into the wall. Grunting with frustration, his blue eyes flashed in command, and the soldier once again opened fire.

Vanessa clutched her Glock tightly as the rounds lodged in the control panel at her back. Sooner or later, one would penetrate and she would die. She had to find a way out of this situation alone, because this time, Thor was too preoccupied to help her.

A sudden lull in the gunfire gave her some time to peek out from behind the device and look at the soldier, who was coming around the circular catwalk towards her. She took the chance and rolled away from the panel and ran towards the glass prison, taking refuge against its bulletproof walls. Quickly, she circled around the cylindrical cell until she was directly opposite her assailant, with two feet of impenetrable glass between them.

Meanwhile, Thor and Loki were still struggling, the latter having distanced himself from his physically superior brother and was firing off blue beams of energy from his scepter. Thor swatted each of them away with Mjölnir, roaring Asgardian expletives.

Vanessa was just walking in circles with the mind-controlled agent, neither able to get a shot at the other. Not that she wanted to shoot him, but did she have any other way?

 _An illusion,_ a voice encouraged her. _Trick him._

 _No_ , she argued with it, quite unconvincingly. _I've never tried to use it in combat before. I can make a light show and that's_ it _._

 _What choice do you have?_

Caving to the voice's advice, Vanessa summoned up her energy and wove it around her, making her disappear into the surroundings. Seemingly perplexed, the soldier stopped in his tracks with a frown.

She allowed herself to stay still and invisible for a second to catch her breath. She was cursing herself madly, for having never seen much use in her ability other than creating a quick diversion and giving her enough time to shoot, for never taking the time to hone it, believing it would never really be needed.

She regretted it.

Vanessa took an experimental step. Her whole disguise rippled as her background changed, and she realized that with an invisibility illusion she would have to modify it each time she moved.

The implication of this made itself known a second later.

There was the loud crack of gunfire, and she turned her body a split second before the bullet would have impaled her lung. Instead, it grazed across her upper left arm, tearing through her uniform and leaving a trail of pain in its wake.

Thankfully, her gun arm was her right.

She fired as her disguise fell apart, the image dismantling as the wound distracted her. Her bullets found their mark, muted as they entered flesh. The body crumpled to the floor, fearsome assault rifle clattering out of its grip.

It was frightening how little difference there was in the action of shooting a dummy and a real person.

But there was a world of difference in the aftermath, Vanessa realized, silvered eyes widening in horror.

 _Oh God, I just killed someone_.

A trickle of warm blood ran down her arm.

 _Oh God_.

She had prepared for this… but not _this_.

She was snapped out of her stupor when a red-hot blast of energy blew through the wall and hit Loki squarely in the chest, sending him crashing through the reinforced metal.

"So that's what it does," said a familiar voice as Thor got to his feet, recovering from being knocked down by a scepter blast.

"Agent Coulson," she croaked, reholstering her weapon. She stumbled towards him, clutching her injured shoulder.

"Are you alright?" he asked her, jogging up to her with what appeared to be one of the weapons she saw on the Destroyer plans. "You need medical attention."

She shook her head mutely. She couldn't bring herself to give voice to the truth, the truth that she was now a murderer.

Coulson gave her a pained, understanding look before pressing his lips into a thin line. "Let's go," he said, giving her a nudge with his elbow as his hands were occupied by the huge weapon. "Engine Three's been fixed and we can leave Loki to Thor."

The god of thunder nodded, and jumped through the hole in pursuit.

Vanessa stumbled numbly after the older agent, her sight spinning in and out of focus. Somehow, she made it to the bridge before sitting down heavily on the floor and allowing a paramedic to attend to her injury.

She peeled her hand away from the wound, her palm sticky with blood.

 _There's no time for this, Vanessa_ , her mind-voice chided her. _You knew what you signed up for._

 _Yeah, I did_ , she responded to it. _I just need time._

* * *

The team was once again sitting around the briefing table, with the exception of Agent Romanoff, who was attending to a recovering Agent Barton.

No one spoke. No one knew what to say.

Loki had escaped. He used an illusion to distract Thor, and made his escape with one of the agency's Quinjets. The location of the Tesseract was lost when the first explosions destroyed most of the equipment in the lab.

Vanessa had made a habit of prodding her wound, which was now tightly bandaged with sterile cloth. The pain seemed distant, like an afterthought. Involuntarily, she thought of her closest friends in New York and wished for nothing more than to be _there_ , not in this damned Helicarrier where the ghost of that soldier still seemed to hover at her shoulder.

What would they say if they'd knew she'd confronted a god, narrowly escaped death, and killed someone? And didn't even accomplish anything?

If William were here, she thought, he'd tell her to be optimistic.

 _On the bright side, there was no Hulk._

Thanks to the precautions they took, Romanoff was able to escort Banner to a safe, untouched part of the Helicarrier by the time the second round of explosions went off. The first round nearly triggered him, but he was just out of the danger zone.

"We're dead up in the air here," Fury started, his voice hoarse with fatigue. "Our communications, location of the cube, I got nothing for you."

There was a pause.

"Yes, we were going to build an arsenal of weapons with the Tesseract," Fury admitted what they all already knew. "I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier.

"There was an idea, Stark knows this, called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could."

"And look how that turned out. You should have chosen better people," said Stark bitterly. "You said it yourself. I'm unsuitable. Why bring me back? Why involve someone - sorry, Doctor - with such breathtaking anger management issues?" He glanced at Vanessa. "And why drag a girl who's barely an adult into all of this?"

"Loki knew about this… initiative much better than any of us did." All heads in the room turned to Vanessa as she found her voice for the first time since the incident in the detainment facility. It was quiet and raspy, but at least she was saying something. "He didn't want a group of remarkable people working together and fighting against him; that's why he let himself get caught. So he could manipulate us into tearing ourselves apart."

Her speech were met with a circle of stares. Fury, Banner, Stark, Thor, and Steve, all of them waiting for her next words. She didn't have much more to say, but she concluded, "And that's what we did. Had we not started working together, who knows how much worse this could have been?"

"It could have been so much worse," agreed Steve. He met her dark, tired gaze with his blue one. "But if you hadn't yelled at us in the lab, Vanessa, we might still be arguing now."

She blinked at the unexpected gratitude, the credit for something she hadn't given a second thought. The only response she could come up with was, "I was yelling?"

Her expression must have been funny, because Steve laughed shortly. "Yeah, you were. I was surprised, too. Didn't think you had it in you."

Like that, the defeated tension drained out of the air, no one wanting to use what little effort they still had left to maintain it.

Stark clapped his hands together. "Well, let's get down to it, team. Show Loki what we've got."

Vanessa managed a smile, a genuine one. Guilt still prickled at the back of her mind, but she had to set it aside to get the job done.

"Loki needs a power source," said Banner, folding his hands on the table. "If we can put together a list…"

"He made it personal," said Stark, and Vanessa realized that he was onto something. He looked at her in understanding. "You said it ー Loki wanted to tear us apart. But that isn't all. He wants to be seen beating us, wants an audience."

Steve was nodding along. "Right, I saw his act in Stuttgart."

"Yeah," Stark concurred, on a roll. "But that was just a preview. This is opening night. Loki's a full-tilt diva. He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument built in the skies with his name plastered…"

A look of horror dawned on his face.

"Son of a bitch!" he swore.

Vanessa could only silently agree.

New York suddenly wasn't such a great place to be.

* * *

Vanessa trailed a few steps behind Steve as they head to the infirmary, where Romanoff and Barton were, presumably. As they drew near, she caught Black Widow's lithe, primed energy, accompanied by Hawkeye's piercing, controlled presence. Traces of the scepter's mysticism still seemed to cling onto the latter, but it was steadily decreasing.

"Time to go," said Steve solemnly, sliding open the infirmary door. Barton was nowhere to be seen, but Vanessa could sense his signature behind the closed door. Romanoff looked a little taken aback at the sight of Steve in full uniform.

"Go where?" she asked.

"I'll tell you on the way," he replied. "Can you fly one of those jets?"

The door opened, revealing a weary-looking Agent Barton. "I can."

Romanoff gave an almost imperceptible nod of her head to confirm that he was on their side.

"You got a suit?" Steve questioned.

"Yeah."

"Then suit up."

Steve gave the two a curt nod, before shutting the infirmary door. Vanessa followed him silently.

"Hey," he said gently, as they were making their way to their lockers. "Are you okay?"

Vanessa gave him a tired smile, trying not to see the dead soldier that flashed behind her eyelids when she blinked. "Yes."

"You don't have to come with us, you know," he offered. "We can handle it."

"No, I want to," she said firmly. That was the one thing she was sure of. They stopped in front of her locker. "I think I have the right to punch Loki in the face as much as any of you do."

Steve smiled. "There's a line-up. I think Agent Barton's going to be first."

She returned the terse grin before shutting the door to the locker, which illuminated itself as she did. She didn't really care about punching Loki. She just wanted to make sure her friends made it out alive.

Inhaling deeply, she swapped her torn jacket and blood-stained shirt for a set of identical, new ones, the supple material of the SHIELD uniform feeling familiar to her skin. She restocked on ammunition and clipped a sheathed boot-knife onto her right boot. She wore a longer one on her thigh holster, right next to her Glock.

That gun was a murder weapon.

She rubbed her eyes with her forefinger and thumb. She was in no danger of tears, still too numb.

In a moment of decisiveness, she slipped the weapon out of its holster and exchanged it for a clean, new one, leaving the old, guilty one sitting on the metal rack.


	6. Hurricane

**Thanks for all the follows and favourites~To make up for the fact that I left this fic for a long time, I'm going to be publishing a little more frequently. I've also been editing old chapters a bit and Chapter 3 has undergone some rather drastic changes to the dialogue between Loki and Vanessa. That being said, enjoy the chapter!**

* * *

Romanoff and Barton sat at the helm while Steve, Banner, and Vanessa took turns pacing the floor of the Quinjet. Sick with worry, Vanessa pulled out her cell phone and dialled William's number.

"Who are you calling?" asked Steve, as she waited for her friend to pick up.

"My friend," she answered tersely. Four rings already. Four more and the call would be over before it even began.

"We have to make sure the civilians stay out of this," he protested. "And you know how the media is ー they'll come in swarming like buzzards. We can't put anyone in unnecessary danger."

"I know," she bit out. "That's why I'm calling."

He picked up. "Vanessa? Please tell me you're free now."

"Sorry, nope," she said, hoping to sound as apologetic as possible. "I need you to do me a favour."

"What is it?"

"Whatever you do, stay away from Manhattan," she ordered. "Can you tell Ryan and Cor this, too? I repeat, stay _away_ from Manhattan."

"What?" William's voice was laced with confusion. "What's going on?"

"Something big is going to happen," she told him. _Like an alien invasion, maybe._ She couldn't tell him any more because Steve was right ー they couldn't risk the information leakage lest the media gets out there before the madness even started. "Just please, listen to me. Trust me, okay?"

The line hummed quietly as William hesitated. "Fine," he said. Then something seemed to occur to him. "Are _you_ going to be on Manhattan?"

"No," she lied immediately. She couldn't give him _any_ incentive to go there, no matter how slight. "I'm still in the middle of the Atlantic right now."

That was true. Except she was cruising towards land in a high-speed jet, with the Norse god of thunder flying by their side.

"Fine," he said again. "I'll tell them. Stay safe, okay?"

He hung up. Vanessa slipped the device back into her pocket, feeling slightly reassured. They would have to contain the fighting to as small an area as possible. The question was: _what's possible?_

New York was becoming visible on the horizon, looking like an image on a postcard with its beautiful, picturesque high rises that she had grown to love so much. The fact that it was about to become the site of a raging space battle made her chest feel tight.

Vanessa steeled herself and activated her power, experiencing the familiar rush of energy to her eyes. But this time, the sensation didn't bring any exhilaration to quell her nervousness. She let a curl of illusionary colour form around her arm and clenched her fist to vanquish it. This gesture did not go unnoticed by Steve or Banner, who crowded in closer in curiously.

"What was that?" Steve asked, his gaze still fixed intently on her arm, where the swirl of colour once was. "Is there more I don't know about?"

Unlike their earlier conversation on her powers, his voice was light and devoid of accusation, as if trying to raise her morale. She realized that was exactly what he was trying to do, and she smiled back in spite of the the tightly coiled wire that nicely described her nerves.

"Yeah," she answered. "I wanted to keep it a secret, since it makes a nice surprise. But I'd never tested it out in actual combat before, so _that_ didn't go well. I'll have to train with it more before I try using it again." She touched her left arm, fingers lightly grazing over the bandaged wound. "At least it prevented Thor from being locked in a glass cylinder."

Her words were met with a round of noncommittal laughter, which was soon silenced by what they saw outside.

As they neared the city, they caught sight of Stark Tower, the famous beacon of sustainable power. Above it, a blue beam of energy was firing off into the sky, ripping a large hole in the sky above. Little figures were coming out of it, and Vanessa had no doubt that they were the Chitauri. Loki's army.

She saw Thor pick up speed and pull ahead of them. The scene (a muscular blonde man being pulled through the air by a hammer) was bizarre, but it was the hardly the strangest thing that had happened of late.

"I see my brother." The Asgardian's deep tones came through the Quinjet speakers. They had given him an earpiece, which made him uncomfortable, but he'd allowed it because they did need a better way of communicating than shouting. "I will go confront him."

With that, he sped off into the distance. It took a few more seconds before the Quinjet was also soaring over the island.

"Stark, we're heading north-east," Romanoff said into her headset.

"What, did you stop for drive through?" the billionaire quipped. "Swing up Park, I'm gonna lay 'em out for you."

Romanoff and Barton navigated the Quinjet towards Stark Tower, where Chitauri were flooding out of the portal in hoards. As they flew by, firing at the aliens like crazy, Vanessa got a good look at what they were facing.

They were purple, fleshy things, covered in a dull gray armour. They gave screeching battle cries as they roared out of the portal on vehicles that resembled more intimidating jet-skis. Luckily, they didn't seem to be very durable, as Stark took out several easily with his laser beams.

That didn't prevent Vanessa from being scared, but it gave her hope.

She spotted Loki and Thor fighting each other on the landing pad on Stark Tower. Loki was firing off bolts of cobalt magic at random, and one caught a wing of the Quinjet, rattling the aircraft and sending Vanessa tumbling to the floor. Nearby, Banner grasped at the walls for support while Steve was somehow still upright.

"We're going down," said Romanoff, impossibly calm. "Brace for impact."

Vanessa crouched down and gripped a pole tightly with white-knuckled hands but kept her eyes open as the craft hurtled towards the ground. A second later, she felt the jarring impact tear her fingers from the pole as she fell forwards onto her knees, bracing her body with her hands. Her heart pounded almost audibly as the jet came to a scraping stop on what was likely pavement.

"Everyone alright?" Steve yelled over the loud groan that Vanessa guessed to be a wing breaking from the fuselage.

Banner coughed an affirmative while Barton and Romanoff unbuckled their seatbelts as if nothing had happened.

"Yeah," Vanessa choked out, still trying to comprehend the fact that she just survived a plane crash relatively unscathed. She stood shakily, wiping her sweaty palms on her pants. The dust left whitish marks on the dark fabric.

The rear doors of the Quinjet creaked open, allowing the outside sunlight to stream in. Vanessa squinted as she clambered down the ramp after Steve, followed by Banner, Barton, and Romanoff. The quintet looked around, discovering that they had very nearly rammed straight into a building but instead stopped just short of it, tearing up a green space in the process.

 _Not too bad._

Following Steve's lead, they made their way to a four way street where Stark Tower was in plain view. The nearby buildings were in various states of 'on fire' and 'filled with screaming people,' and if that weren't enough, a colossal beast roared out of the wormhole.

"What the _fuck_ is that?" asked Barton in disbelief. The rest of the group stood frozen as a fish-like creature snaked out of the portal, easily as long as some buildings were tall. It was covered in the same plate armour as the Chitauri, and had a huge maw dripping with saliva. From its sides, it released dozens of regular Chitauri foot soldiers, who fired their strange weapons into buildings indiscriminately.

"Stark, are you seeing this?" Steve yelled into his comm, staring up at what Vanessa decided to dub the 'Leviathan.'

"I'm seeing, still working on believing," Stark admitted. "Hey, Banner… you think maybe you could do something?"

Banner only looked at the Leviathan, looking unsure.

"Yeah," Captain America agreed. "Now might be a good time to get angry, doctor."

This seemed to prompt something in the man that made him slowly walk towards the Leviathan, still fixated on the beast. He took one look back and said, "That's my secret, Captain. I'm always angry."

The giant alien seemed to notice the Banner standing alone in the abandoned street and came hurtling towards him, just as he swelled, his skin taking on a green hue.

Vanessa watched in equal parts horror and awe as the mild-mannered Dr. Banner morphed a fearsome mountain of a man ー the Hulk. He roared with the Leviathan, grabbing the thing by its jaw and stopping the creature in its tracks single-handedly, muscles rippling with the exertion.

She had never been more glad to see something on her side before.

Stark swooped in and fired his lasers at the Leviathan, finding a soft spot and searing off massive pieces of flesh that fell to the pavement, still sizzling from the heat. The beast cried out in pain and anger, attempting to attack Iron Man, but found itself preoccupied by the Hulk again.

 _I don't belong here_ , Vanessa realized. _Not with these people._

"Liang," came Romanoff's sharp voice. "Snap out of it. We're moving on!"

She shook her head, clearing away her shock, before sprinting after her fellow agents and Captain America. A mixture of fear and resolve was running through her veins, keeping her going, and she wasn't quite sure which one was dominant yet.

As such, she just unquestioningly followed Steve's lead to another intersection, where traffic had been stopped by a hoard of Chitauri. People were screaming and cars were on their backs with their passengers still trapped inside them.

At that moment, she was painfully aware of the fact that the fight was more than them, Loki, and the Chitauri. She knew it well on the Quinjet when she made a call to William, telling him to stay clear of Manhattan. But taking in the scene with her perfect vision suddenly made everything more _real._

Inexplicably, she remembered her mother, an altruistic woman and renowned surgeon who always had a ready smile. Dead for four years from a terrorist attack, trapped in an automobile like much of the people in front of her. She remembered why exactly she decided to lend her skills to SHIELD.

 _Protection,_ Fury's voice echoed in her mind. _You want to work towards a world where something like Macau will never happen again, right?_

 _Yes._

"Those people down there need help!" yelled Steve, pointing further down the street where dozens of people were cowering in an overturned bus.

"I'm on it," she said, swallowing her apprehension and sprinting towards the wreckage. A Chitauri leaped into her path but she took it down with two bullets, one glancing off its armour but the other finding its head.

"We got this!" she heard Romanoff call. "It's good. Go!"

As she climbed onto the bus, Vanessa felt the Captain's powerful dynamism thrum and spike before running off into the distance. Hawkeye was jogging towards her and the toppled vehicle, while Black Widow was firing round after round into Chitauri skulls.

She pried apart a window that was already half-open and was immediately met by a pair of small, clammy hands.

"Help," cried a woman, holding her shaking child up to the SHIELD agent. Tears were streaming down her face uncontrollably. "Don't let my child die."

"We won't let anyone here die," said Vanessa with as much conviction as she could muster, desperately hoping that if she was sure enough, the promise would come true.

She pulled the little girl out of the window and handed her to Barton, who carefully lowered the child to the ground. Then she grabbed hold of the mother and allowed the woman to clamber out. As she evacuated the civilians, Hawkeye held off the surrounding Chitauri.

Once all the victims were safely out of the bus and ushered into the basement of a nearby building, Vanessa, Romanoff, and Barton stood in a triangular formation, surveying the carnage. Chitauri were closing in on them, baring their fangs and brandishing glowing cannons.

As if an unspoken signal had went off, all three agents simultaneously opened fire, with Romanoff and Vanessa emptying clips into the aliens while Barton took down multiple Chitauri with a single explosive arrow.

Vanessa ignored the rippling pain in her arm from her earlier injury and focused solely on the fight. Her enhanced vision ensured that each bullet found its target while helping her avoid attacks with its predictive capabilities. After a little while, her movements seemed to become automatic ー duck, roll, fire, dodge.

"This is like Budapest all over again!" she heard Romanoff shout over the gunfire, presumably some sort of shared experience.

"You and I remember Budapest _very_ differently," Barton responded, firing an arrow into a Chitauri's skull, where it lodged with a sickening crunch.

It wasn't long before Vanessa had emptied several magazines, but the onslaught of alien forces showed no sign of stopping.

"There's no point unless we close that portal," Vanessa said into her mic to whoever was listening. "They'll just keep coming."

A moment later, lightning struck a Chitauri and bounced from one monster to another, striking a dozen of them down. Thor touched down regally like the deity he was, despite being covered in dust and what was likely… remains.

"The powers surrounding the cube is impenetrable," he announced gravely.

Vanessa glanced up at Stark Tower while futilely depressing the trigger on her gun, realizing that she was out of ammunition. Up on the tower, a massive energy ー the Tesseract ー was humming with active power as it brought more and more enemies into New York. But just beneath it, she detected a familiar tingle of mystical force, as beckoning as ever ー the scepter.

And Loki's frosty aura was absent.

 _Perfect. I could use a weapon_.

"Thor-" she started, before being cut off by a pouncing Chitauri. Without any bullets, Vanessa resorted to spinning around and kicking the thing hard in the face, years of taekwondo and her more recent SHIELD training teaching her how best to utilize her body weight. She sent the alien flying backwards and she took the brief opening to slip her boot-knife out and stab.

She winced slightly as the exertion caused the gash on her arm to throb with the flex of her muscles.

"Tornado roundhouse kick," Romanoff commented approvingly. "You're well-trained."

She brushed a thin strand of hair out of her face, acknowledging the compliment with a nod.

"What is it, Vanessa?" asked Thor, throwing his hammer, which made a whistling sound as it travelled through the Chitauri ranks. It returned to his hand, but not before defeating several creatures.

"Can I have a lift? To the top of the tower?"

The god frowned. "Trying to close the portal is futile."

"Loki's scepter is also up there," she pointed out. "I could use something that shoots energy beams."

He shrugged. "Fair. Come close, then. I travel fast."

Vanessa followed his instructions and grasped onto his waist tightly, feeling Thor's muscles lying taut beneath his skin as he spun Mjölnir in alarmingly quick circles. And then-

Weightlessness.

The Asgardian kept one large, strong hand around her hips while she clung onto him for dear life, the Chitauri and her allies all becoming tiny specks as they rose higher and higher into the air. She couldn't close her eyes because the scene was both terrifying and breathtaking at the same time.

The breeze whipped her ponytail into her face and caused Thor's red cape to snap like flags on windy days. When they finally touched down on Stark Tower, her legs wobbled slightly as she found her footing.

"That was… something I'd like to do again," she breathed, meeting Thor's blue eyes with her dark brown ones. "I'm jealous that you travel around like that all the time."

He smiled briefly, before being forced to address the Chitauri flooding out of the portal. Vanessa quickly scooped up the scepter that was lying idly on the tarmac, feeling its ancient power thrum beneath her fingertips. There was strange sensation that felt almost invasive, as if the weapon's vitality was melding with her own, but that was soon forgotten. There was so _much_ latent potential, and it was waiting for her to use it.

Experimentally, she pointed the thing at a passing Chitauri chariot and mentally willed it to shoot off a blue bolt. After humming briefly, it did, firing off a beam of pure energy that knocked the screeching thing out of the sky. The recoil threw her backwards a few steps.

 _It'll take some getting used to._

She tried again, this time pointing the weapon up at the spinning portal. She willed the beam to increase in intensity, firing off into the portal before the aliens could come out. She managed to incinerate several Chitauri before they even made it into the New York airspace.

 _This isn't so bad._

And then another Leviathan came roaring out of the portal.

Almost instantly thrown into a state of panic at the thing only a couple hundred feet away from her, Vanessa nearly dropped the scepter as her previously impeccable vision blurred for a second. When it cleared again, she could only stare at the fish-like creature as it undulated into her world with a low rumble of aggression.

"There's another one," she said into her microphone, her voice small.

"We see it," Stark responded sarcastically. "It's a little hard to miss."

Iron Man swooped in next to her, his red and gold armour scratched and dirty in numerous places. But still fighting.

"Let's see if we can cut through the shell," he decided in a tinny voice, probably due to the layer of metal that was his mask. Vanessa could only watch as he fired a white-hot laser beam at the creature's plate armour. "And I'm talking to you, too!"

Vanessa blinked, her previous, relative calm all but gone. "Me? What can I do?"

"You're holding the destiny stick, kid!" Stark shouted, exasperation edging his voice. "So maybe you've never really thought yourself as one of us. At the start, I had my doubts about it, too. But hey, you've stuck with it, given an alien a lecture on coffee, and got the rest of us to work together. You've been an Avenger from the beginning, whether you like it or not!"

She stared at the weapon in her hands for a second, and then at the Leviathan snaking between the buildings and the man confronting it alone. She never thought that she could compete with the rest of them. She still didn't, not really. But did it really matter?

 _No, I guess not._

As if hearing her thoughts, Stark's wry tones blasted out of her radio. "So make yourself useful, Creepy-Eyes!"

 _Creepy-Eyes?_

She grinned a little.

 _Give me the biggest beam you've got_ , she told the scepter silently. The metal seemed to heat up beneath her palms as it charged up the gemstone, pulsating with magic.

A brilliant blast of intense blue energy exploded from the tip of the scepter, hitting the Leviathan near its back end and cutting through the plate armour easily. Large pieces of metal fell away from the monster and it shrieked in pain as the beam progressed onto its flesh. She could hear the sizzle and resisted the urge to cringe in sympathy for the thing.

The beam stopped, causing Vanessa to stagger slightly. Strangely, it almost seemed to have tapped into her own energy, but she told herself that it was probably just fatigue. After all, she had been at a high level of exertion since the battle began.

"See?" Stark laughed. "You're getting it. I'll take it from here. Focus on the portal."

The Leviathan flew away, chasing after the speck of red and gold that was quickly retreating into the distance.

Vanessa turned her attention back to the wormhole, where the onslaught seemed to be never-ending. At the base of the generator, she detected a stirring energy. Someone was up there, and it was human.

"Mr. Stark, who's on top of your tower?" she questioned, making for the signature immediately, scepter in hand. There was no way for her to make it to the top except by going through the Stark penthouse, which she did, climbing in through the broken window.

"Oh, that's Selvig," responded the billionaire. "You know, the guy Loki controlled."

The last time she had sensed Loki's pawns, they had the same ambience as the weapon in her palm. Selvig's vitality held none of that.

"Well, I don't think he's still being controlled," she said. "Are your security mechanisms still up? I need to get to him."

"You're in my house?" Stark asked with mock annoyance. "Fine, JARVIS, let her in."

She picked through the wreckage that was previously a living space, just as an elevator pinged and slid open. Vanessa stepped inside, and it closed and began ascending.

"Thank you, Mr. Stark."

"Remember, you've just enjoyed the privilege very few people get. Riding my elevator."

Despite the fact that Manhattan was crumbling around her, she laughed, grateful that there was still someone to maintain the levity in such a time of crisis.

The doors opened and wind once again greeted her face. She was standing on the tip of Stark Tower, overlooking a burning island. The moment was going to be carved into her memory, like every bit of the battle so far. As long as she saw it through eyes of silver, it would be irrevocably recorded in her brain.

She wasn't sure what to make of it ー it was both magnificent and terrifying at the same time.

A groaning old man lay beside the portal generator, which was exuding enough power to give her a headache. She tightened her grip on the scepter as she warily approached Selvig and knelt by his side.

"Dr. Selvig?" she asked lightly. "Doctor?"

The man sat up slowly, opening his eyes to reveal wild, blue-gray eyes with dilated pupils. They were just the ordinary sort of blue, not the glowing sapphire that indicated Loki's mind control.

His face was etched with despair and desperation as he watched the carnage that he had unwittingly helped create.

"Loki's scepter," he whispered. "The energy… The Tesseract can't fight. You can't protect against yourself."

Vanessa didn't let any confusion show on her face.

"It's okay, doctor. It's not your fault," she soothed, going with the safest conversation option. "You didn't know what you were doing."

Selvig looked at her, his expression almost fierce. "Actually, I think I did. I built in a safety to cut the power source."

He was staring at the scepter in her hands.

"Oh," Vanessa gasped. "Okay, let's try it."

She grasped the doctor's arms and helped him get shakily to his feet.

"There's a way to close the portal," she shared into her mic, her voice raw with hope. A round of cheers came through the tiny speaker in response, but Nick Fury's urgent voice cut through their ecstasy.

"Liang, what's the situation?" he asked. "The council wants to know."

"We can hold it," she promised. "We're closing the portal now."

She was helping Selvig stumble awkwardly towards the force field surrounding the Tesseract. It was almost over.

Fury sighed in relief. "Thank goodness."

"Just hit the force field with the scepter and keep going, even if it resists," Selvig instructed. "If you can touch the device with the thing and pull it out again it'll shut itself off."

Vanessa nodded, prodding at the energy with the golden tip of the weapon. She carefully pushed the thing through the force field, grunting slightly at the resistance. Finally making it through, she tapped the generator lightly and quickly extracted the scepter.

Above her, the portal shrunk and rolled inwards, like clouds closing over a rift in the cerulean skies. And like that, the dark hole vanished.

 _A little anticlimactic, but better than more aliens._

She looked at Selvig and smiled. "Thank goodness, doctor."

Cheers, this time with more finality, exploded through her communication device. Selvig returned her smile weakly, the gesture not reaching his haunted eyes. She wanted to somehow help him, but that had to wait, since there were still more Chitauri running free.

"We're almost done mopping them up here. We just need to get Loki," said Romanoff, sounding reprieved. "He'll be heading to Stark Tower to turn that thing on again for sure, so be careful up there, Liang."

"Roger that." Vanessa hefted the scepter before helping Selvig onto the elevator and punching in what she hoped was the right floor. After a few seconds, it arrived back on the bottom level of Stark's penthouse, just in time for her to see Loki flying towards her on a Chitauri chariot. She pointed the weapon at him, ready.

"I got him," came Barton's deep tones, before she could charge up the scepter. An arrow came whizzing through the air, but Loki _snatched_ it a split second before it would have impaled his face. Smirking, he made to fling it aside but it detonated, blasting the Asgardian off of his ride and onto the rooftop landing.

Warily, Vanessa pointed the weapon towards the heap of green and gold and slowly advanced towards it, ready to attack. As the god straightened, however, a larger green thing flew up the side of the tower and punched Loki _hard_ , causing him to fly through a shattered window, past her, and collide with the wall with a loud crunch.

 _Am I glad that guy is on my side,_ Vanessa thought again, almost fondly, as the Hulk stormed into the building and straight for Loki.

"Enough!" he yelled, rolling to his feet in a flurry of broken glass, still in remarkably good shape. He looked thoroughly unhinged, now, eyes wide with the reality of his defeat. "All of you are beneath me. I am a _god_ , you dull creature, and I will not be bullied by-"

His monologue was interrupted by the Hulk, who promptly grabbed him by the leg and repeatedly slammed him into the floor like a rag doll, destroying what was left of Stark's expensive tiling.

Vanessa was certain the guy was dead after such an ordeal until he gave a faint whimper of pain.

She almost felt sorry for him.

With the scepter still ready to fire, she walked towards the figure lying idly on the floor. Even after such a brutal beating, he only had some cuts on his face. That wasn't to say that there wasn't any internal damage, of course, but if his skin was so durable, she could only begin imagine what it would take to break his bones.

Behind her, she sensed the metallic signature of Stark, the lithe ambience of Romanoff, the precise energy of Barton, the acrid electric force of Thor, the dynamic power of Steve, and the raw strength of the Hulk.

The Avengers.

Loki gingerly pulled himself to a sitting position, hissing in agony.

Barton nocked an arrow as they slowly closed in around the defeated god, pulling the string taut.

He choked out a wispy laugh. "If it's all the same to you, I'll have that drink now."


	7. Aftermath: Part 1

Vanessa had shawarma once before, and she'd liked it. It tasted even better this time, after the long struggle ー almost as good as victory itself.

 _What I wouldn't give to add a coconut milk tea_ , she thought wistfully. _Oh, or coffee. Please, coffee_.

She had her share of caffeine on the Helicarrier, but considering she'd been running on only adrenaline and who-knows-what-else for the past 24 hours, she would have really appreciated some more.

The famished Avengers sat quietly around a table, fixated on their food. The sound of the Shawarma Palace owner sweeping up broken glass seemed almost deafening in the silence.

Vanessa took a sip from her drink, feeling a strong signature make its way onto her radar. It was evocative of Stark's Iron Man suit, humming with steely energy. Stark had mentioned earlier that he had a friend on their way, so perhaps this was him.

After waiting for about thirty seconds with lapsed actions, Vanessa turned her head to see a dark gray suit of armour clank into the restaurant. The owner glanced up briefly from his sweeping, unfazed by the rattling metal suit.

"Rhodes!" Stark greeted happily, waving a hand at the new arrival. "Pull up a chair!"

Vanessa and the rest of the team watched as the newcomer removed his helmet and stepped out of his amour, revealing a smiling, dark-skinned man. "My name is James Rhodes. It's an honour to meet you all, heroes of New York."

"That what they call us now?" asked Romanoff, quirking an eyebrow. "'Heroes of New York?'"

"Yeah, well, we're actually called the Avengers," quipped Stark, rolling his eyes. "The media always gets things wrong."

Steve cracked a smile. "They do, don't they? Let's introduce ourselves to this gentleman."

Barton started, since he was the closest to the man. "Clint Barton," he said briskly. "SHIELD Operative."

The circle decided to turn clockwise, moving onto Romanoff. "Natasha Romanoff, SHIELD Operative."

"Vanessa Liang, SHIELD Operative," she said on her turn, feeling almost like she was being uncreative, so she added, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rhodes."

Rhodes gave her a nod. "You as well."

"Steve Rogers," said Steve. Then, an embarrassed expression came onto his face. "What's my occupation supposed to be? Captain America?"

Stark immediately burst into peals of laughter and was soon joined in by the rest of the table. The levity of the scene, following such an event, almost made Vanessa cry as she tried to pretend that they were only tears of laughter.

"You could have gone for 'soldier,'" she muttered to him, under the din.

He only gave an exaggerated sigh in return.

"I am Thor, god of thunder," said the Asgardian, after the last of the giggles had died down. "It is an honour, James Rhodes. What do you call yourself? 'Steel Man'?"

He seemed to swallow a snort of laughter with difficulty. "It's 'War Machine,' actually."

Thor nodded approvingly. "A fearsome name. Superior to 'Iron Man.'"

"And I'm Bruce Banner," finished the doctor, before Stark could begin his witty retort. He extended a hand that Rhodes shook.

Vanessa felt a vibration in her jacket pocket.

"I'm just going to take a call," she told the rest of the team, and made her way outside before swiping right on the screen.

"You liar," were the first words she heard when she picked up the phone. "You were on Manhattan. I _saw_ the footage! The whole world saw the footage!"

"What footage?" she asked, feigning innocence. Of course there was footage already. Darn the media. "The situation only just cleared up."

"Turn on a TV and that's all you'll see," William snapped, still sounding irritated. "Were you wearing silver contacts or something?"

Vanessa swallowed. "About that. Just don't tell anyone that's me."

The frown he likely wore seemed almost audible. "Why not? Everyone who knows you, well, knows it's you."

"I'd rather not have my name released to the public yet," she explained. "They're trying to figure out who I am, right?"

"Well, duh." Suddenly, it was Cordelia on the phone instead, evident in her chirpy tone. "You're even more of a badass than I thought you were."

"Why, thank you." Vanessa took the compliment with a grin. "But trust me, everyone else is stealing the spotlight."

"That's true." Her friends seemed to be passing the device around, because this time, it was Ryan's level voice. "There were only a few shots of you. The coverage was mostly Iron Man and Captain America."

"I prefer it that way," she said with a shrug, despite the fact that the other party couldn't see her. "Anyway, just don't tell anyone that's me. SHIELD is going to release our codenames instead."

"You have a codename?"

"Not yet. I'll have to discuss that with my superiors. I'll talk to you guys later, okay? I need to finish my shawarma."

* * *

Vanessa felt weird walking through the ruined streets carrying Loki's scepter. Thankfully, the area was still marked off-limits and was free of reporters and cameras (for now), as far as she could tell.

"So that's where it was!" Agent Coulson's exasperated voice greeted her as she arrived at the foot of the ruined Stark Tower, where a number of SHIELD agents were milling around and picking through rubble. "We've been looking for that thing for an hour."

"Sorry, the only place we could trust was with us," she apologized, handing him the weapon. It hummed slightly as it left her grasp, as if reluctant to be handed off. "Where's the prisoner?"

"We locked him in the basement." Coulson tilted his head towards the tower. "He didn't seem keen on coming with us, and I highly doubt his brother would appreciate it if we made off with him to HQ."

"Thor would not," she agreed. "What sort of precautions have been taken?"

At this, the older agent pursed his lips. "Just cuffs, for now. It doesn't look like he plans on escaping, and Stark's tower has some pretty good security."

"Has he said anything?" Vanessa asked.

"Of course not," said Coulson. "We've done a little interrogation, and I have to say, he's stubborn."

Vanessa took in the statement and surveyed the scene, all of it caused by the vengeful god. Several SHIELD agents and Damage Control workers were hauling away Chitauri carcasses in carts, and she couldn't even begin to imagine how they were going to clean up the Leviathans.

A question then occurred to her. The Chitauri didn't appear particularly intelligent during their fight. In fact, they seemed to be a hive mind, evident when all of the remaining aliens lost their heads when the portal closed off their connection to what was likely their command centre. Thor had speculated that Loki had made a bargain with the Chitauri, but unless they had some sort of superior overlord or commander of sort, there was no way those things could have come up with the idea on their own.

And since that supreme Chitauri ruler was still out there somewhere, the threat wasn't over.

 _Looks like I'll have to pay Loki another visit._

"Can I talk to him?" she asked Coulson, who turned to face her with a strange expression.

"Are you sure you still wanna go near that guy?" he asked skeptically.

"No," she admitted, nudging aside a piece of destroyed road – proof of what Loki was capable of – with her toe. "But there are still things we don't know.

"Like?"

"His motivations, the Chitauri's motivations… heck, all we really know for sure is that this whole thing _happened._ "

Reluctantly, Coulson nodded. "Fine. I'll let you in."

She followed him into the lobby of Stark Tower, which was remarkably clean for having been the centre of the battle. But then again, most of the fighting took place near the top of the tower.

"You've been codenamed 'Sterling,' by the way," he informed her as they headed down the concrete stairwell that lead to the basement of the building. "That should be okay, right?"

"'Sterling,'" she rolled the word over on her tongue as if judging it. "Doesn't sound quite as intimidating as 'Black Widow' or 'Hawkeye.'"

Coulson snorted. "That's because you _aren't_ as intimidating as Black Widow or Hawkeye."

At the bottom of the staircase, there was a scanning device in front of which Coulson flashed his card. With a beep, a heavy iron door slid open. "Be careful in there," he warned her. "I'll watch, just in case. Even in cuffs, that guy's dangerous."

"I will," she assured him, setting a tentative foot into the cold room. It was cold, she realized, not only because it was a basement but also because Loki's chilly presence filled the place, emanating from a figure huddled against the wall.

He glanced up wordlessly as she approached, Hulk-induced wounds decorating his angular face. Even in defeat, his eyes were still as sharp and alert as ever.

With a jolt, Vanessa registered that they were _green_ , not blue.

And not the type of green that was easily confused with blue, but a startling emerald.

But that wasn't right ー she saw with her own _silver_ eyes that they were blue, like the sky. The image was perfectly ingrained into her memory; she could not possibly be wrong if she saw them through her ability.

"To what do I owe this visit?" he inquired loftily, shaking her from her shock. He managed to sound proud and regal, despite being shackled and stripped of his armour and helmet. His gaze flitted to her face briefly, locking on dark irises in perplexity and then realization. "Don't you despise me?"

The question was easy to answer, so she decided to tackle it before going back to doubting her eyesight's reliability.

"Of course I despise you," she said, her voice echoing in the empty basement, making it sound even more hollow than it already was. "But for the sake of accomplishing something, I'll reserve judgement for after I've heard your side of the story."

She had no shortage of insults for him, the one who ravaged her home, killed and injured hundreds, and _made her a murderer_.

But she knew better than anyone that the most important part of an interrogation was composure.

"Wouldn't it be easier to just hate me?" he taunted.

"Oh, I'd probably hate you regardless," Vanessa answered, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. It worked, much to her gratification. "It's how much I do that might change. But what I'm here for is about more than you and me. More than both our realms."

His eyes flashed in understanding. "You want to know more about the Chitauri."

"As quick on the uptake as ever," she quipped wryly, not feeling nearly as kind as she did during their first exchange. So much had changed since then, and she wasn't quite sure yet how it applied to her. "Why would they want the Tesseract?"

The Asgardian just laughed. "The cube can open rifts in the universe and render the concept of space meaningless. Why _wouldn't_ they want the Tesseract?"

Vanessa recognized the omission and activated her ability, a wordless warning to him that he should refrain from lying further. As her vision sharpened, she noticed that his irises were still undeniably green.

Then why was she so sure that she had seen blue in the cell? And on the tower?

"You're a defeated prisoner," she said lowly, hoping that her voice betrayed none of her uneasiness and confusion. "Are you in any place to be withholding information from me?"

"And you're a mortal," Loki retorted, holding his chin up high. He was goading her, his frosty aura seeming to ensnare her, to tell her to strike. "Are you in any place to be questioning a god?"

"A god, long since fallen from grace," she ground out, his provoking energy pushing her into lashing out, although the remark probably would still have come easily without it. With a sort of fierce satisfaction that she never thought herself capable of, she saw the words clearly hit a nerve.

Loki glowered at her in irritation. However, his reaction only lasted a brief moment, before he burst into a laugh.

"So now you've given up all pretense of compassion, of sympathy, haven't you?" he jeered. "Finally dropped the act from the cell?"

"That wasn't an act," she said, before even realizing what had just rolled off her tongue in response to his inciting comment. The carelessness of her own words was shocking, but something about his accusation seemed to _pull_ the disclosure from her.

The god of mischief stiffened against the concrete wall, tense in the knowledge that she was telling the truth.

"What?" he asked anyway.

"It… it wasn't an act," she repeated, now that it was too late to take back her words. The awkward silence left her fumbling for something else to say. "I was serious about giving you coffee if you had a cup."

At this, Loki snorted. "That, I can believe you were genuine about. It was just a moment of frivolity for you."

As if the first confession had opened up some sort of floodgate, the next words tumbled out like a stream of water, and about as coherently. "Everything I said on the Helicarrier was serious. I was serious about just wanting to talk. Sure, I got information from it, but that was just a byproduct."

"A byproduct of what, exactly?" The trickster's eyes were narrowed in incredulity, as if he couldn't possibly believe that someone was being genuine to him. The fact almost made her temporarily forget that she was face to face with a murderer.

"Of trying to understand," she said. "I never really did."

He scoffed, "You will never be able to."

"And if I told you I could, if you were more forthcoming about it?" she posed the same question she did on the Helicarrier.

"I still wouldn't tell you."

Frustration was rising inside her, and Vanessa noted with no small amount of internal panic how wildly out of control she was allowing her emotions to run. The first time talking to him, maintaining composure wasn't effortless, but it was doable. Confusion and sympathy, the leading feelings of their previous meeting, were more easily hidden than anger and hatred, their replacements. Now, the conflict between wanting to scream insults at him and needing to keep her situation a calm interrogation was grating at her insides.

"Why not?" she asked, settling for some sort of combination between the two ー a tad aggressive-sounding but still controlled and level. "What is there for you to gain by hiding the identity of whoever you bargained with?"

"See?" Loki rolled his eyes again, quite infuriatingly. "Your question proves that you do not understand."

"That's because you haven't _told_ me anything, Loki." It was her first time saying his name aloud _to him_ , and it felt weird ー she had only ever referred to him as 'you,' and on one occasion, 'sir'. From the brief look that crossed his face, he felt similarly about it.

Luckily for her, he didn't bring it up directly, but his voice was dripping with contempt when he flouted, "You're the one with the eyes, Midgardian. Why don't _you_ tell _me_ something?"

 _"Your mortal mind wouldn't be able to fathom it," he had lashed out. She didn't flinch, but she could not deny that the look in his eyes in that moment terrified her._

 _They were haunted._

She was going to tell him something, and she knew he would not like it.

"You're scared."

"Ridiculous," he growled, slowly getting to his feet but quick to contradict her. He towered over her easily, standing nearly a foot taller than the SHIELD agent. She stood her ground as his shackles clinked ominously, meeting his angered glare with her own.

"Liang, I think it's a good time to get out of there," Coulson's voice came over her radio. She ignored it.

"You're scared," Vanessa reiterated, taking a precautionary step back. "I see it. You're not the first. I've seen the same expression in other people before."

She had. The terrorists, spies, and arms dealers brought into the Triskelion for her to interrogate ー almost all of them wore the same expression Loki did now, albeit not as well concealed. An mask of composure and bravado to hide the fact that they were _scared_ to be in the questioning room of the most influential intelligence agency in the world.

But she was certain that Loki was scared of something else entirely.

"And what do you know about me?" he asked dangerously. "I am no ordinary criminal in one of your interrogation rooms, girl."

"You aren't," she agreed, her heart rate rising rapidly with the tension. "But the fear is the same. Widened eyes, accelerated breathing ー you might be better at hiding it than the others were, but in front of me, that hardly matters."

"I am a god. What have I to fear?" The words still bristled with aggression, hissed through bared teeth. "You should cease your baseless claims, Midgardian. I may be chained but I believe this is still more than enough to silence you."

Loki's ambience, usually crisp and wintry, cooled into something frigid that seemed to almost sting Vanessa's bare skin. A little voice in her head, probably her rationality, was yelling at her to make a dash for the exit, but instinct or maybe intuition kept her planted to the floor.

"Stop lying," she said softly, as if trying soothe a frightened animal. It almost seemed to work ー his freezing power withdrew some of its spikes, still hovering threateningly in the air. "What do you get out of this?"

"Nothing," he responded briskly, still wearing a deep scowl. "But nothing is far better than something undesirable."

"Something undesirable?" she saw the opportunity and challenged it, taking care to make sure she didn't appear too prying or eager. "What would that be? Whatever they promised to do to you in the event that you fail to present them with the Tesseract?"

Loki's jaw tightened visibly before he let out a bitter laugh. " _They_? The Chitauri? You yourself must have worked this out by now ー they aren't particularly intelligent. What can they do to me?"

"Then whoever's in charge of them," Vanessa revised her statement. "You had to have struck a bargain with _someone._ "

"What makes you think that I've struck a bargain?" he asked, looking more troubled than angered. "They were dumb enough just to follow me here."

It was a blatantly obvious lie that he made no move to salvage. Vanessa pushed on. "Then you should have nothing to fear in defeat," she pointed out. "What do I have to do to convince you to just _tell me?_ "

At this, the Asgardian abruptly flashed her a wolfish smile that showed an unsettling amount of teeth. "Finally, you realize that information isn't free," he said lightly. "Why don't you make an offer?"

"There isn't much I can offer you," said Vanessa, glancing up to meet his scrutiny. She briefly contemplated telling him to name a price, but she had a sneaking suspicion that letting the god of _mischief_ set the rules wasn't a great idea. She needed some time to think about it, so she instead opted to say, "Let me give you a raincheck for that."

He looked at her blankly. "A raincheck?"

She realized he wouldn't recognize the term and smiled briefly, mildly amused by the thought. "A raincheck is a Midgardian word that refers to an offer that can be postponed for later use."

"Oh, no, it's much more interesting if you bargain with something," he scoffed after her explanation. "Besides, it's highly improbable that I will ever have the chance."

Vanessa took in his casual statement, which barely concealed his acridity at the idea of facing whatever 'Asgardian justice' was going to be. She fished around in her jacket pocket to find a folded card and handed it to him. "Here," she said.

"What is this?" He frowned at the white slip of paper as if she was giving him a dirty tissue, but took it nonetheless, straightening it out.

"My business card," she replied. It bore the seal of SHIELD and Vanessa's name, role, and phone number in navy blue. "I'm not sure if you have telephones on Asgard, so you might not be able to call me. But if you ever get the chance to come back, you'll know how to find me."

His expression was unreadable, even with her eyesight, as he scrutinized the small card in his hand before smirking and tucking it away into the folds of his leather coat. "SHIELD Liaison," he said, sounding almost entertained. "What an understatement."

The corners of Vanessa's mouth couldn't help but twitch upwards slightly. "So what do you think? Do we have a deal?"

"For now," he said. "I never could resist an intellectual gamble."

The unexpected similarity to their first encounter brought another tentative grin to Vanessa's face, which she wiped away almost immediately. She had to stop forgetting that the man before her was a power-hungry, homicidal god. There was to be no room for that sort of mirth.

"May I start?" she asked.

He inclined his head in what she assumed to be a 'yes.'

"Thor said that you made a deal with the Chitauri," she began. "The Tesseract for the Earth. Is that true?"

"It is," he said, without hesitating. The sudden shift in his tone from closed off to forthcoming was suspicious, but she wasn't about to point that out yet.

"Why do they want the Tesseract?" she went on, before adding, "What do they seek to do _using_ the cube?"

Loki dragged his tongue across his teeth, as if savouring his next words. "If I told you, you would wish that I hadn't."

"I'm no stranger to regret."

"Carnage," he said simply, as if the fact was self-evident. And to Vanessa, it almost was ー what could be worse than an alien race taking over the Earth? An alien race _obliterating_ the Earth. "On a massive scale. They'll need more than just the cube to -" He paused, studying her closely. "You don't seem surprised."

"You aren't making it sound very surprising," she countered, trying to figure out how exactly she felt about the situation. She knew she _should_ have been scared, but it was like her brain hadn't quite yet processed the gravity of the truth. "You know what? Finish your sentence."

He did as told. "They'll need more than just the cube to do so."

"Your scepter," she realized. "That has something to do with it, right?"

"Perhaps." He inclined his head. "But that isn't something that I want to divulge at present."

That brought yet another question to Vanessa's mind ー what exactly was he willing to tell her? He hadn't yet been promised any reward, so whatever he was telling her, it _had_ to also benefit him in some way.

She could only hope that she wasn't losing anything in the meantime.

"Fine," she conceded. "And I don't suppose you'll be telling me who's out there, wanting to kill everyone."

"No, I won't be," he acquiesced, his tone declaring the conversation closed, much to Vanessa's disappointment. But she couldn't argue with it, not when he's already given her information for free. "Be grateful for what you get, mortal. This is your reward for your clarity of sight."

Something about that last sentence prompted her lips briefly twist into a smile. "Was that praise?"

"Of course not," Loki said dismissively, but he wore the ghost of an answering smirk. "Now, are you going to leave, or not? You have what you came for."

The SHIELD agent wasn't completely satisfied, but she was in no place to press for more ー not when she was the one who set the conditions of their deal. But there was one more thing she wanted to know, and perhaps he would be willing to discuss it. "I have another question. It's not related to the Tesseract or the Chitarui anymore."

"Go ahead. You may not get an answer, but I welcome you to try."

"Are your eyes supposed to be green or blue?"

He frowned; the subject clearly something unexpected. "Green, why?"

"I'm sure that they were blue… oh."

A faint memory of two combined ambiences. A sudden, unwelcome image of Loki's mind-controlled soldier. He had blue irises that glowed faintly like - "It was the scepter, wasn't it? It influenced you."

"What?" The trickster looked mystified. He was clearly unaware of the connection.

"I think you were under the influence of the scepter, because your eyes were blue the first time I saw you," Vanessa explained quickly, not knowing whether or not she needed to also expound her sensory abilities. "But they're green now."

Loki's mouth twitched as he took in that information. "Well, isn't that an interesting development," he said, sounding bored when he was clearly thinking hard about it. "It does not make me innocent."

"No, it doesn't," she assented. "But it changes things, if only a little."

"How so?"

"It makes me want to believe that something forced your hand. Or at least, influenced it." She admitted, "It's a foolish thought, I suppose."

"You're correct about it being foolish," he scoffed, but something about his voice seemed to almost soften. "It's useless sentiment. Why would you think that when it's so easy to just hate me?"

She thought about his question, which had actually been posed several times in this one conversation alone. Why _did_ she think so, when she could easily despise him and act accordingly?

She remembered her first conversation with the god of mischief, which now seemed like nearly a lifetime ago.

It was difficult to hate someone so hurt.

"My job is in dealing with people," she said, feeling almost as cryptic as Fury often was. "So I try not to form any opinions about them at all. It interferes with this line of work."

Loki's eyes flickered to her in disbelief ー he knew that there was more, but Vanessa was grateful that he chose not to pursue it.

"If this confession is some ploy to get me to reveal more information, don't count on it," he broke the silence, surprising her with the levity behind the words. "The door is over there."

"Are you sure you have nothing more to tell me?" she tried one last time. He grinned sharply, and this time, his row of even, white teeth looked less threatening than simply amused.

"Quite positive," he assured her.

With a muted puff of exhalation from her nose, she turned away, accepting what information she had managed to extract.

And as Vanessa made for the door, she felt hope yet for the broken god who sent her off with a soft laugh.


	8. Aftermath: Part 2

**As always, thanks for all the reviews, follows, and favourites! Your feedback is always appreciated!**

* * *

"How did it go?" Coulson asked as Vanessa emerged from the cold basement. "Did you get what you needed?"

"I thought you were watching," she said, rubbing warmth back into her chilled hands. "You told me to get out."

"There's no audio on this thing," he said, pointing to a small screen on the wall. "For all of Stark's technology, he never really cared about his basement, I guess. So, did you?"

"Some," she answered as Coulson relocked the steel door and waved her up the staircase. "It's nothing good."

"Of course not," the older agent snorted. "What did he tell you?"

"That a powerful, intelligent alien race is out there, plotting to destroy the universe," she said, sounding almost nonchalant. Coulson stared at her in incredulity, so she added sarcastically, "No big deal."

"We have to tell the director as soon as possible," he said seriously, ignoring her snark. "Did he say anything else?"

"The Tesseract is only the beginning," she replied wearily. There was a certain surreality to everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, and it seemed that she was only comprehending the fact now. It was evident in her tone. "His scepter has something to do with all this crap, too."

"I'm sending that to DC tonight," Coulson promised. "It'll be examined."

Vanessa nodded, not entirely satisfied with the lack of conclusive answers but there wasn't much she, or anyone, could do about it. "Do you think we can get a few days off before we need to get started on defensive measures?"

"Yeah, for sure," said Coulson, his head bobbing up and down earnestly. A thought, which must have been amusing, seemed to occur to him and he smirked slightly. "'Until such a time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.'"

She quirked an eyebrow. "Fury?"

"Yup." He laughed. "We'll get started working on more defense measures immediately. There are some pretty special things going on already at HQ. And, of course, we have our rapid response team if things happen much sooner than anticipated."

"The Avengers," she mused, a question presenting itself for the first time since the Initiative was revealed. "What's behind the name?"

Coulson shrugged. "It's Fury. What do you ever know?"

She made a sound of agreement. The two agents appeared back on the ground floor of Stark Tower, where Damage Control workers had begun to sweep up the broken glass caused by a Chitauri that had crashed through one of the lobby windows. The creature's body and skiff were being wheeled out in barrows through the front door.

"Anyway, I'll be heading to the Triskelion tomorrow morning," he said. "What about you?"

She tilted her head to one side. "Fury hasn't said anything. I guess I'll come with, though, because he'd definitely want to see me."

Coulson took that in and quickly typed something into his phone. "Great. Now, where's the Tesseract?"

"Er, it may or may not be in a plastic bag at Shawarma Palace." Vanessa coughed. The older agent levelled her with an extremely exasperated look.

"Why didn't you think to bring it with you when you came here?" The two SHIELD operatives exited the tower at that moment, and Coulson's raised voice caused several nearby clean-up workers to look up in curiousity.

Vanessa made another choked noise of apology. "I'm sorry. Well, for leaving a radioactive entity in a bag in a restaurant. I'm not sorry for not bringing it with me, because Thor wouldn't have it."

He inclined his head in question, irritation less obvious in his features but still present. "Oh? Tell me about it."

"He wants to take it with him when he leaves," she said. "Says that we've proven that we're unfit to have it. If you ask me, though, I think he has a point. The thing used to be on Asgard, anyway. We're just putting it back where it should be."

Coulson looked more skeptical about it. "I'm not sure we can make that call," he said contemplatively. "This is a huge decision ー not even Fury would be able to make a decision like this without the Council's approval."

Vanessa shrugged. "Not much we can do if he just, say, _takes_ it to Asgard."

They stepped out from a building's shadow and were immediately assaulted by intense rays of afternoon sunlight, which gleamed off of the shiny glass-and-metal buildings that defined Manhattan. Many of them were still broken and smoking from recent conflict.

Vanessa shielded her eyes from the blinding light, the scars of the battle reminding her of her conversation with the god of mischief and what his revelations might mean for the future. Something powerful and dangerous was lurking in the depths of space, ready to destroy planets with the power of the Tesseract. And what did the cube have in common with the Scepter? Scepter with a capital S, now; she doubted that there would ever be anything else like it.

But she couldn't really bring herself to dwell on the morbid thoughts.

 _Vacation first_ , she told herself. _Anxiety later._

Like Stark said, they'd earned the leave of absence.

* * *

The next day, the Avengers gathered in the middle of Central Park. Miraculously, there were no crowds of reporters or flocks of cameramen when they did so. Vanessa had no doubt that SHIELD probably pulled something to keep people away while two gods teleported off to who-knew-where.

Thor pushed his brother roughly to the middle of a paved circle. The trickster's wounds were healing remarkably quickly ー what were raw, red weals the day before were now a muted pink with new tissue. A metal muzzle had been clamped over his mouth in addition to the heavy shackles, causing Vanessa to frown with distaste. It was dehumanizing, she thought, but she wasn't about to argue with Thor's judgement.

She looked on silently as Coulson and a still shaken-looking Selvig helped Banner place the glowing Tesseract in a strange, cylindrical contraption with copper-coloured handles. They presented it to Thor, who took it with an appreciative smile.

The day before, the god of thunder had declared that he would be taking the Tesseract to Asgard and locking it in a safe vault. No one argued, except for Stark, who had to put in his customary wit. But he didn't _really_ disagree.

That left Fury to deal with Alexander Pierce and the World Security Council, and if anyone could placate a group of five very disagreeable world leaders, he could. Not that it would be easy, of course, but it _was_ a part of his job.

Vanessa turned her attention back to the events unfolding before her.

Thor grasped one end of the device tightly and extended the other towards Loki, who took it with some reluctance. He gave the rest of the Avengers one last grin before twisting the handle, initializing a stream of blue energy from the cube. Vanessa felt the cosmic power ripple over the park, transporting the two to Asgard.

As they disappeared, she could have sworn that Loki's eyes met hers one more time in understanding.

That _was_ what it was, right? Understanding? But she had no idea what sort of understanding they'd came to. Understanding of the threat, perhaps. She still had yet to tell any of her fellow Avengers of the revelation ー they deserved a break longer than 24 hours.

"C'mon, Liang," said Romanoff, snapping her out of her thoughts. "We'd like to get to the Triskelion before dark."

Vanessa nodded, opening the rear door of the black SHIELD sedan but hesitating from getting in. "Wait," she said. "I'm going to say goodbye to Steve."

Barton seemed to roll his eyes behind his sunglasses. "You couldn't have done it earlier?" he asked, without real annoyance. "Make it quick, or we'll just leave you here."

When not under mind control, the agent could be quite humorous and easy to talk to. Vanessa laughed. "Just give me one minute. In the grand scheme of things, we could spare that much time, right?"

Not waiting for another remark, she jogged over to where Steve was mounting a motorbike. Stark and Banner had already disappeared in the former's shiny sports car, and Coulson was waiting at the big SHIELD van, ready to leave with the other agents.

"You're going to be okay?" Steve asked her when she approached. She smirked slightly.

"That's what I should be asking. It's not like I was the patient."

Ignoring her comment, he smiled and revved up the engine. "Well, see you in DC. In a bit."

"You're going to DC? To work with SHIELD?" Vanessa raised her eyebrows.

"Yeah," he said, nodding. "I don't think I'll ever be anything but a soldier."

"Well, SHIELD's a good choice for that." She shrugged. "Now, are you going or not? You revved the engine a little prematurely."

He grinned, swinging one leg over the seat. "Fine, if you want me gone so badly."

"You're going to get fined for not wearing a helmet!" she called after him as he left, envisioning a hilarious scene in which Captain America, in full uniform, was pulled over and issued a ticket. He yelled something in response, but it was lost to the wind and noise.

Vanessa turned back to her colleagues and slipped into the back seat of the car, feeling the cool leather beneath her palms.

"Ready for a road trip?" asked Romanoff. Instead of putting on a seatbelt like a normal passenger would, she kicked back and rested her heels on the dashboard. Vanessa didn't question it. A little comfort wouldn't hurt, and it wasn't like police officers could see into the car with the darkened windows. Besides, the lack of seatbelt was likely because she wanted a quick escape from the vehicle if needed. Paranoia came with the job, and now more than ever she understood why.

"I wouldn't call it a road trip," Barton grumbled, getting behind the wheel. "All I'm going to do is drive for four hours."

* * *

"How urgent is it?" Fury asked Vanessa as she blinked the last of the sleep from her eyes. They'd only just arrived at the Triskelion and she had already been peppered with questions that she weren't listening to. "Because if it isn't, go back to New York. They could use a few more agents on scene and according to downstairs, someone from there has been calling the SHIELD office once every thirty minutes asking for you."

She held in a laugh, but it must have still been obvious on her face because Fury raised an amused eyebrow. It had to have been her friends ー her phone had died that morning, before Thor and Loki's depart.

"It's urgent," she said, once she regained her composure. "It has to do with Loki."

The director pondered it for a second, just as the elevator reached their floor. "Fine," he said, motioning for her to follow him into his office. "Let's hear it."

Nick Fury's rectangular office was sparsely furnished, with a few leather couches, a desk, and a large screen that covered half of one wall. The opposite wall was all window, leaving the last two to be bare concrete.

She looked around the simple workspace, running an idle hand over the back of a sofa. "We won't be overheard, right?"

There was the ghost of a smirk on Fury's face. "Of course not. Secure office."

Instantly, the windows blackened and Vanessa could feel the electronic hum of energy surrounding the room. SHIELD soundproofing technology.

Her superior looked at her expectantly.

"I interrogated Loki a second time after the battle was over. He said that there's a powerful alien force out there, more intelligent than the Chitauri," she began, taking on the typical 'mission report' tone. The monotony made everything seem less bizarre, somehow. Loki had presented the information in a similarly detached manner. "They apparently seek carnage, on a massive scale. Loki also said that they required more than merely the Tesseract to accomplish this."

Fury sat down at his desk, drumming his fingers on the wooden top. He was taking the news in his signature manner ー that was to say, wholly unfazed.

"What else?"

"Loki's Scepter might have something to do with all this," Vanessa went on. "Do we know anything about its connection with the cube?"

"The data we have is still in the process of being salvaged," said Fury. "It's making its way out of the Helicarrier's files now and into SHIELD databases. Is that all?"

Vanessa nodded. "Yes, sir. You aren't surprised."

He chuckled. "Why would I be? I've been expecting this for years. You guys, the Avengers, and Phase Two ー both have been solely developed for this purpose. And I told the Council this, too. This fight with Loki, it's a message we're sending out to the world. _To all the worlds_."

"That we can fend them off?"

"Not only fend them off, but make sure they regret setting foot on the surface of this planet." Fury's eye was still blazing with the joy of their recent triumph and as a result, determination and hope for the future. Even so, the unconcealed faith did little to put the small, pessimistic part of her at ease.

Loki had been _so scared_.

All of the Avengers were circled around him and Hawkeye had an arrow aimed for his brain, but all he did was laugh, as though he'd only lost a game of little importance.

Whatever out there was _much_ worse.

"But we _are_ taking other precautionary measures, right?" she asked persistently. "The Avengers won't be our only line of defense?"

"We are," Fury promised, taking in the barely noticeable quiver of worry in her voice. "I understand that you've just walked out of a shocking situation, Agent Liang. Aliens invaded and people died. The Helicarrier nearly fell from the sky. Manhattan's in ruins. You've earned a break.

"Go back to New York, take some time off. We'll call you if we need you. And based on what Loki told you, we'll take action accordingly."

She nodded again, this time more slowly. "Thank you, director. I take it that you'll find me _something_ to do."

Fury smiled. "Of course."

* * *

And that's how she found herself, a few days later, in a shabby basement apartment on Manhattan Island, wondering how on earth she was going to redecorate the place.

"Fury couldn't get me anything better," she muttered, wrinkling her nose at the damp, musty smell of the place. "Whoever was here before me didn't take care of it well."

A warm, comforting signature came through the door behind her, bringing with it a certain fluffiness, like a blanket. William nudged her shoulder with a grin. "Don't you think about escaping back to DC, now," he joked, dark eyes sparkling with humour. "We'll help you clean up here and then we're going to IKEA."

"Yes, I love IKEA!" Cordelia's shrill tones came through the open doorway. A lanky brunette barrelled into the room and tackled the two, face bright with excitement.

Finally, the last of the trio appeared in the doorway, seeming unimpressed. "Back for an hour, and already leaving me with your stuff," Ryan grumbled with mock annoyance, dragging Vanessa's small suitcase over the threshold. He dropped the case on the floor by the door, running a hand through his short black hair. "Seriously."

She smiled brightly at her friends, ignoring the hot tears that stung her eyes. She wasn't usually the sentimental type, but so much had happened in the last 48 hours that she wasn't sure she came out of it the same person.

"There's so much I need to tell you guys." She blinked away the moisture that none of them seemed to notice. Or at least pretended not to.

It felt good to be ordinary, if only for a while, and she was grateful for the chance.

She didn't know when the next time 'ordinary' would come around.


	9. Routine

**I'm pleased to announce that _Clarity_ will not be updated regularly on Fridays starting June 8th, 2018! And, as always, thanks for all the reviews, favourites, and follows! **

* * *

The ecstasy of victory and the sweetness of home only lasted for so long, and after a few days and several (rather chaotic) trips to IKEA, Vanessa had returned to a somewhat normal routine. Her life felt almost the same as it did before she joined SHIELD ー doting on William's dog, Snowball, and going to the movies in the evening.

Her daytimes were a little different than before, but were very structured and undemanding. She began every morning with a run, before heading to her mundane day job that she had been assigned in order to give her a break from the more intense interrogation and investigation work she usually carried out.

Fury had decided that she would replace Agent Coulson ー who was allegedly off to do some highly classified work ー in overseeing clean-up efforts, but there was really no need for her. The Damage Control workers, along with the few other SHIELD agents assigned to the job, were more than capable of handling things themselves. The only minor scuffle with a group of private contractors was sorted out quickly.

As such, Vanessa used the vast amount of free time to mull over Loki's words, hoping to just _think_ her way through the problem. According to Thor, before he left, Loki's Scepter wasn't something of Asgard. What was its connection to the Tesseract, seeing as they were able to track one with help from the other? Did the Scepter also emit low levels of gamma radiation?

She didn't like the thought, because _she_ had used the Scepter and would've hated to have some sort of strange mutation happen to her.

 _But how much weirder can it get?_

The ringing of her cell phone interrupted her thoughts, and she pulled it out of her pocket to answer the call.

"Vanessa Liang speaking," she said to the unknown caller, expecting it to be someone from the Triskelion with an update on the situation or something along those lines.

Instead, she got Stark's snappy tones. "Come to the tower," he ordered. "Or rather, come _into_ the tower, since you're basically here already."

She looked up from her spot standing amongst the wreckage of a crossroads and at the glistening glass panels of Stark Tower, which was only a short walk away. The genius and billionaire had wasted no time starting repairs on the thing, and half the broken windows had already been changed.

"I'm working, Mr. Stark," she said.

"No, you're not."

She gave a little huff of laughter through her nose. "You're right, I'm not. But I'm paid for this, it's not like I can just up and leave."

" _I'm_ in charge of Damage Control," he informed her loftily. "I'll send someone to replace you."

"Fine, I'm coming," she sighed, amused, her finger moving towards the 'end call' button when Stark added:

"You have a minute. Any longer and you're climbing sixty flights."

He hung up. Vanessa glanced at Agent Cremlow next to her, who had heard the entire exchange. He shrugged.

"Just go," he suggested. "If Fury finds out, 'Tony Stark' is a perfectly viable excuse."

At this, she snickered and sprinted off in the direction of the tower, making her presence in the lobby known at thirty-nine seconds. The elevator made a noise of authorization before permitting her to enter it, the floor already preset to take her straight to Stark's penthouse.

While there was no elevator music to accompany her ascension to the 60th floor, the technology at Tony Stark's disposal made her trip quite fast.

"What do you need me for, Mr. Stark?" Vanessa asked him, stepping out of the elevator into the room where Loki had been pummeled by the Hulk. It was covered in sheets of white plastic, plaster dust, and renovation tools, and a few workers milled about, doing repairs. The place was already mostly fixed, despite the fact that only a little more than week had passed since the battle.

Tony Stark was standing at a counter and studying a holographic blueprint of his tower. "How's this?"

She walked closer to it, scrutinizing the lines of blue light hanging in the air. The tower looked mostly the same as it did now, but bulkier in some places and there was an obvious change of design in the lettering.

"Am I just here to offer my opinion on your tower design?" she asked, tilting her head to one side. "If so, are you sure you don't plan on replacing the rest of your letters?"

Stark rolled his eyes. "Fury told me you're one of his smartest operatives," he quipped. "You can figure this out."

"You could bear to part with your precious tower?" She raised her eyebrows, having come to the correct conclusion.

"I'm not _parting_ with it," he shot. "I'm sharing it."

"'Avengers Tower,'" said Vanessa, savouring the words. "That has a nice ring to it."

Stark grinned. "Not as good as 'Stark Tower,' of course, but I'm willing to take one for the team. Speaking of names… you're 'Sterling,' now, aren't you? 'Creepy-Eyes' suited you better."

In the days since the Battle of New York, as it was now called, she had been getting an unreal level of attention from the media. While it couldn't be compared to the amount of press Steve and Stark were enjoying, them being already established heroes, the idea that her new codename was also widely recognized on the streets felt foreign and somewhat uncomfortable to her.

While few recognized her without her silver irises and a Glock, she'd passed store windows that boasted of figurines bearing her likeness. They didn't sell as well as Iron Man or the Hulk or even her fellow SHIELD operatives, but that didn't change the fact that she was essentially a celebrity.

"How do you deal with it?" she asked. "The reporters and cameras and the action figures?"

"I don't go outside," he pointed out in a matter-of-fact tone. "It's a foolproof method."

"Genius," she snorted, not completely sarcastic. "If you'll allow it, Mr. Stark, I have to go back to work."

"Yeah," he said dismissively, turning back to his holograph. "You can go now."

She rolled her eyes with mock annoyance. "It was nice to see you too, Mr. Stark," she joked, heading back towards the elevator. Her finger hovered over the button on the wall as an idea occurred to her ー should she tell Stark about Loki's warnings?

"What?" the billionaire asked, before she could even open her mouth.

"If I told you that there was an even greater threat than the Chitauri out there, waiting, would you believe me?"

She turned around, and he didn't even blink. Like Fury, he seemed to have expected it. "Of course."

* * *

That evening, she returned to her basement apartment, which had a cozy feeling now that it was well-furnished and cleaned up. Fixing herself a quick dinner, Vanessa showered, changed, and retired to her bedroom. There, she found the entire wall of corkboard waiting for her.

So far, she had only pinned up a few pieces of paper detailing what she knew about the Tesseract, the Scepter, and the Chitauri. A stack of notepaper and a little tub of pushpins lay on the small desk in the corner, waiting.

Vanessa knew it wasn't her place to be conducting study or concocting theories ー she was supposed to leave that to Fury and the team at the Triskelion. But as absurd as it felt to her, she was an Avenger and they were the emergency response team in case Loki's words became reality. As such, she felt a sense of duty that pushed her into starting her quest for answers.

 _Of course, there isn't much I can do on my own._

After she explained the situation to Stark, she had the same conversation with Banner six floors down, while helping him clean up a lab. He had promised her that once his initial research on the Tesseract and the Scepter got back to him, he would share with her whatever interesting things he found.

The Avengers were going to make themselves ready, because they had wordlessly agreed with each other that Fury wasn't exactly the sharing type. Vanessa herself had plenty of experience with that ー she didn't even know she was a candidate for the Avengers Initiatives until Loki blew up the Helicarrier.

She traced the triangle between the three pieces of paper on her bulletin board absently, staring at the sheets as if that would allow her to suddenly reach an epiphany of some sort. It didn't, and she sat down on her bed, deciding to transition to the final phase of her day.

Vanessa wasn't sure whether she'd call it 'practice' or 'experimentation.'

After the disaster on the Helicarrier, she had resolved to identify the true properties of her abilities. Though she had discovered them shortly after her mother's death a little over four years ago, she hadn't given their limits and full capabilities much thought. She'd used her illusions to hide her activated eye powers in class, and after joining SHIELD, she'd shown Fury her powers and learned to create simple images. Between her physical training and her work, though, she had never explored just what exactly her illusions could accomplish.

But after the Battle of New York, she had the time and the incentive to test things out.

The first thing she established was that her illusions were area-of-effect ー that much should have been obvious to her, but she had made the mistake of thinking otherwise because of the panic of combat. The thought brought an unwelcome wave of guilt that she had to push away with great mental force. Casualties happened often in her line of work, and with a power-hungry Norse god of mischief thrown into the chaos, it was almost inevitable. Or so she told herself.

Regardless, she couldn't turn herself invisible while she was moving, at least not at her present level of expertise. Lesson learned.

The second discovery she made about her powers was that they were only as realistic and effective as she imagined them to be. This fact probably also should have been obvious to her, but she'd only became fully aware of it after unspecifically willing a lion to appear and finding herself face-to-face with a life-sized plush toy of the big cat.

As she struggled to create a detailed image of a coniferous tree, Vanessa found herself envying Loki, who could create perfect duplicates of himself without so much as a snap of his fingers.

 _He's a god_ , she chided herself. _You're only human._

She let a burst of colour splash onto her wall, a trail of stars form on the ceiling. _Pretty, but still useless_. Flopping backwards onto her bed and deactivating her abilities, she sighed. Perhaps she would never go beyond simple tricks and light shows, and even those were tiring after too many.

 _"There is use to be found in everything, Liang," said Fury, folding his hands on the table. "That is the foundation of interrogation, and everything else you will do as an agent of SHIELD."_

 _"Yes, sir."_

If she got good enough at them, simple tricks had their own use. She could do more than change her eye colour. She could alter her appearance from top to bottom, pretend she was a tree, anything –she could be a master of disguise, if she practiced enough.

 _Once they get done with Avengers Tower, I could have some fun playing with Mr. Stark._

The idea was quite enticing.

* * *

A few days later, while at work, she received another call from an unknown caller. Hoping that it wasn't Stark calling her up to the tower again for some other nonsensical purpose, she picked up the phone.

"Vanessa," came Banner's voice. She almost breathed a sigh of relief ー the doctor wouldn't call her unless he had a legitimate reason, and he probably wouldn't force her to immediately leave work. "I have some results that you might want to see."

"When should I come over?" she asked.

"Just come when you get off work," he replied as expected, before adding, "I'm not _him_ , so I'm not going to make you come right now."

She grinned. "Alright, I'll be there at around five. Should I pick up food?"

"Don't, I want to waste some of Tony's money and order Thai food," he said good-naturedly. "See you, then."

He hung up and Vanessa tucked her cell phone back into her pocket, turning her attention (or some little part of it) to the clean up site.

Two weeks of hard work made Manhattan a good deal more tolerable to look at, but Damage Control worked much too slowly, in Vanessa's opinion. There just weren't enough people on the ground, working enough hours to get the area fully functional again. That, or Stark has been sneakily concentrating efforts at his tower. She wouldn't put it past him, especially considering that her visit to Stark Tower proved that the place was in remarkably good shape, despite having been the epicentre of the battle.

The rest of the afternoon passed with little further incident, unless one counted the time a passing worker nearly spilled coffee on her blazer. Vanessa used the time to try and guess what exactly Banner had found. Perhaps he had received the data from the Helicarrier that Fury had promised to send?

At five o'clock sharp, she clocked in her hours and left the clean-up site, heading straight for Stark Tower and riding the elevator up to the 54th floor, as per Banner's text instructions. The doors slid apart to reveal the scientist opening up a box of pad thai in a pristine, white lab, the fragrance wafting into the air. Stark was sitting on a nearby stool, indistinctly complaining about not ordering pizza instead.

"Hey," said Banner, passing her a paper box and a pair of chopsticks, which she took with a quiet thanks. "Come look at this."

She followed him to a screen, which displayed a map of the world. It was decorated with four little colourful, blinking dots.

"Radiation sites," Stark revealed, sounding surly (presumably due to the lack of pizza). "Don't know what Banner wants to show you, exactly."

"All of these sites emit a similar level of gamma radiation as the Tesseract did," Banner took over. "I thought that you might be interested in this. I doubt that all of these mark a magical cosmic entity, but some of them might be worth a look."

She swiped her finger across the screen, landing on a red blip in western China. She tapped the dot and it expanded into coordinates.

"Not this one," Vanessa muttered, crossing it out with a line tool she found in one corner of the display. "That's a Chinese generation plant. And not this one, either ー it's another SHIELD Dark Energy project."

She struck out a possibility in Texas. That left her with two remaining ー one in Africa and another in Nepal. Banner looked on, appearing to be both intrigued and impressed.

The African site caught her attention and she tapped on it, revealing its coordinates and the extra label 'Wakanda.'

"Wakanda," she mused. "We have no idea what's going on in there."

"Wakanda?" Stark repeated. He sat up straighter, quickly swallowing his mouthful of noodles. "You're telling me that there's some sort of Tesseract-like thing in there? _Of course._ "

Banner was perplexed, and he made it obvious in his knit brows. "Sorry, I don't follow."

"Wakanda is an isolationist African nation," Vanessa explained. "From what the world knows of them, they're quite poor but peaceful, they keep to themselves, and-"

"And they are somehow the world's only source of vibranium, the strongest metal to ever known to mankind," Stark interrupted her. He appeared almost bitter about it, as if it was his greatest regret not being able to make a suit out of the stuff (it probably was). "It's what made the old man's shield."

"You think they could be harbouring something like the cube?" the doctor asked, raising an eyebrow.

Vanessa snorted. "From what we can see, they only have shepherds, but no one's really been inside. If they do have something like the Tesseract, there's nothing we can really do about it." Stark gave a grunt of assent. "Let's just look at this one, then."

She opened the information bubble for the last remaining point ー a green blip. Along with the coordinates, it also gave her 'Kathmandu, Nepal.'

"What could possibly be there? Is Nepal doing dark energy now, too?" Banner opened up another computer and entered the coordinates into a map software. He was given an aerial view of the location ー a fancy building that combined the country's traditional architecture with the shiny metals that were the trend in the modernized world. It was a little out of place amongst the more run-down structures around it, but nothing particularly noteworthy.

Stark studied the image in scrutiny, zooming in on a small pagoda until the picture was grainy. "Doesn't look like a place where you'd find a space portal or similar."

Vanessa finally opened up her take-out box, pleased to find thin rice noodles. After a quick bite, savoring the tangy spice, she said, "We'll know once we check it out, right?"

Both men stared at her like she was crazy, and Stark was the first to ask, "You're going to Kathmandu?"

"I'm on 'break,'" she replied with a shrug, stirring at her food with the unevenly broken disposable chopsticks. "Why not travel a little?"


	10. Kamar-Taj

**So, this chapter was (much) later than I promised. For that I apologize, but hopefully the advances in plot this chapter will make up for it. Special thanks to** **thenumbertwentyseven** **for their constructive criticism and contribution in pointing out copy-and-paste errors in the story, and another mention to** **lucidhalos** **and her amazing stories. Really, read them.**

 **And one last thing: for those of you who previously knew me by a different username, it has been changed to peppermiintmocha. That's all! Enjoy the chapter!**

* * *

She ended up going to Nepal alone, which was somewhat of a disappointment. Neither Stark nor Banner seemed to want to, and Romanoff and Barton were off on yet another mission. Steve was suffering ー sorry, _receiving_ ー his Triskelion orientation (which Vanessa had done before, and it quite literally took days), and of course, Thor was on a different planet entirely.

She'd considered asking Fury and taking a SHIELD agent with her, but after some consideration that became out of the question ー the existence of the Tesseract alone required Level 7 clearance, and how did she know who to trust? She trusted Coulson, but he was off somewhere, busy with things she had no right to know; and she would have trusted Fury, if not for the fact that he had kept the Avengers Initiative from her and how many secrets that man was reputed to keep.

In the end, she got permission and some funds from the director, packed up her things, and flew to Kathmandu in a standard passenger jet.

The mission wasn't an officially sanctioned SHIELD operation, but rather just a preliminary investigation. If she were to find something of notice, perhaps SHIELD would send a team, but for now, she travelled alone on a standard passenger jet, dressed like a typical tourist in blue jeans and a white t-shirt. Her long black hair was tucked into a baseball cap, and she was only carrying one concealed weapon. While having a firearm probably would have given her some additional sense of security going into the investigation of a potentially dangerous energy source and those affiliated with it, she couldn't carry a gun onto an airplane. Instead, a quick visit to the SHIELD armory turned up a ceramic-graphene knife she could take with her, should the need to defend herself arise.

She really hoped it wouldn't, and the first leg of her trip passed without incident. The flight was long for her taste, especially when taking into account the three hours she spent at Jakarta for a layover, but at least there was no greater trouble than being recognized by a group of Indonesian tourists and pulled aside for autographs. More than a month since the Battle of New York, fame still felt unfamiliar to her, even as she wore sunglasses on the streets to hide her most distinctive feature and avoid being recognized.

But Vanessa moved on.

Nineteen hours later, she set foot in the airport. Though she was still shaking off her grogginess, her senses immediately picked up on a faint but undoubtedly primordial presence across the city. It pulsated with power in the same way the Scepter and the Tesseract did, but had its own unique signature, as if it held the essence of time itself. She knew immediately that it had to be her target.

Wasting no time checking into her hotel and depositing most of her belongings on the floor, she entered the coordinates into her phone to obtain a route. The easiest way to reach her destination would be by car, but she didn't want to hail a taxi for paranoia – the cabbie could recognize her, they could know something about the thing she was searching for... the possibilities went on. Bussing would require transfers, and the one remaining option was walking. She decided that it wasn't a bad idea.

The city didn't fail to fascinate her as she navigated its bustling avenues, following the beacon in her mind. It had been a long time since she had last treaded streets like those. Crowded markets boasting fancy silks and spices, street vendors with carts covered in delicacies, the nutty fragrance of sesame wafting into the air ー all of it reminded her of the night markets of her childhood home.

Half an hour into her expedition, she ducked into an air-conditioned fast food joint to grab a late lunch as well as to seek refuge from the sweltering summer sun. While Vanessa was fairly resistant to high temperatures, and Kathmandu was relatively cool compared to her birthplace of Shanghai, she still wished to avoid the peak of the day's heat.

It was then, in a cool corner of a McDonald's, that she noticed she was being followed.

A presence had stalked her into the restaurant, and she realized that the same signature had been there just outside of the airport, on the streets, and even on the bus she had taken. How could she have not noticed it before? She blamed the mild jet lag she was beginning to experience.

There was something else about the energy, besides the fact that it had followed her, that was intriguing. It exuded an eerily mystical quality that was mixed with the signature of a typical human. The strange blend created a sensation that sent shivers down Vanessa's back, now that she was fully aware of it.

Carefully activating her eye abilities out of sight of the other occupants of the restaurant, she cloaked the silver of her irises with dark swirls of illusion and locked her gaze on the source of the energy.

It came from a fairly young East Asian woman with long, wavy hair, dressed in some traditional linen garb reminiscent of the ones worn by several of the street vendors she had seen outside. Despite the heat, she wore a light beige cloak, looking rather out of place in a western fast food chain.

Vanessa briefly considered confronting her… follower, but decided against it. There was a certain unsettling prickle that the woman's ambience possessed, something dangerous.

Picking up her plastic tray, she walked over to a nearby trashcan and set it on top of the stack. She kept an eye on the woman with her peripheral vision, and for a second caught an disturbing glimpse of a dark brown iris trained on her.

Vanessa exited the restaurant and was immediately assaulted by a wave of dusty heat. Inside the McDonald's, the signature had yet to stir, but she monitored it closely as she hiked up a steep, uphill road. Sure enough, the second she was out of the sightlines of the restaurant's windows, the energy was spurred into action.

She wondered if she could lose the woman, and put this into practice by ducking down a shadowy alley decorated with clotheslines hung with colourful washing. For a normal person, doing so in an unfamiliar country was a terrible idea, but Vanessa's senses told her that the area was deserted, save for the small stray cat that was pawing through a garbage can.

She wove through small streets and back alleys, taking a long and squiggly path towards her destination. However, that soon proved futile as she recognized the signature, somehow perched on a rooftop, monitoring her as she stopped for breath in a narrow slit between two buildings.

Vanessa wiped away the beads of sweat forming on her forehead and tilted her head upwards to catch a fleeting image of a sweeping cloak, before the woman slid out of her line of sight. She was still above her, though, so Vanessa called, "Hello there."

She waited for several seconds for a response, which came in the form of rustling cloth and a dark shadow jumping from the building and landing with a muted _fwump_ on the dusty ground. The figure removed its hood, further confirming that it was the woman from earlier.

"Er, it's nice to meet you," Vanessa said, one hand extending in a handshake while the other moved to her waist, as if to tighten the jacket tied around it. Instead, she felt her fingers brush the faint outline of the knife concealed in its folds, in case she needed to defend herself at a moment's notice.

"Likewise," said the woman, taking her outstretched hand. She had a faint accent. "Tina Minoru."

 _Japanese_ , the SHIELD agent observed. _Living abroad for ten to fifteen years, probably. Mid to late twenties… wait, is she even human?_

What else could she be, though? An Asgardian? That was unlikely ー she felt powerful and skilled, yes, but the amount of energy present within her couldn't be compared to the likes of Thor and Loki. Then what?

"Vanessa Liang," she introduced, determined to find the answers for herself. She rejected all of her practiced aliases, since it was likely that the older woman already knew who she was, anyway. "May I ask why you've been following me?"

Minoru gave her the ghost of a smile. "You're Vanessa Liang," she repeated, as if that simple statement was enough to answer all of her questions. "Perhaps you're better know as… Sterling."

"That's true," she admitted. "If you'll allow me to be frank, though, what do you want with me?"

"That depends," Minoru said cryptically, the tone of her voice bearing a semblance to Fury's. The SHIELD operative groaned internally.

"On?" Vanessa asked, feeling apprehension stirring in the pit of her stomach. She still hadn't quite yet recovered from her last confrontation with an otherworldly deity, and she desperately hoped that Minoru wasn't one of those.

"Why you're here," she replied. The corners of her mouth lifted briefly, as if in reassurance. "What brings you to Nepal, Miss Liang?."

"Work," said Vanessa simply. Minoru looked as if she was about to press for details, but she held up a hand. "I can't tell you any more than that. It's quite classified."

"Of course, you're an associate of SHIELD." Minoru nodded, and Vanessa wondered what exactly the woman was aware of. "What would it take for you to tell me?"

 _Oh, more informational bargains. I seem to be coming across these a lot, lately._

She opened her mouth, about to say "A trade-off," but at the last moment she changed her words to "There are people coming."

It was true. She sensed four presences closing in on them in the narrow alleyway, and soon enough, the leader of them emerged from the shadows and blocked off the exit.

He was tall and intimidating, with close-cropped black hair and a tanned, scarred face. Vanessa, however, was relatively unfazed ー there was nothing particularly imposing by his power signature, and after Loki, the gangsters like him on the streets of New York all seemed much more bark than bite.

"Give us money and we let you go," snarled the man in heavily accented English, baring a mouthful of crooked teeth.

Behind him, one of his subordinates snickered something in their native language, causing the him to grin sharply. Next to her, Minoru visibly stiffened at the suggestion, her face becoming stony with anger.

It took Vanessa a couple of seconds to come to the correct realization, and she didn't need to understand Nepali to know what they meant. Ordinarily, she wouldn't draw her weapon on a civilian. If they were asking for money, she could give some to them and avoid conflict. It wasn't like the money was hers to begin with.

But what they were possibly hinting at was a different story, and she _wasn't_ exactly keen on being assaulted in a foreign country.

She slipped the sheathed ceramic knife out of the folds of her jacket just as the man took a large step forwards. He froze in his steps when he saw her weapon, eyes narrowing in hesitation and surprise. But then, he grunted and picked up a conveniently placed wooden stick that lay on the ground and dusted it off, the predatory smile returning to his face.

"Uh... if you see the opportunity, run," Vanessa told Minoru, already trying to discern the best way to defend them. But the woman only smirked.

"Run?" She cracked her knuckles and tossed her long, black hair behind her. "You wouldn't say that if you knew who I am. You're the one who should run, _Sterling_."

A chill ran down Vanessa's spine, both from the unexpectedly aggressive edge in her voice and the dangerous quality that seemed to surround her in almost visible waves of energy. For the first time, she found the words to describe the smoldering coals that comprised her ambience, and as weird as it sounded, Tina Minoru had a… flavour. She wasn't the first or only ー Cordelia's energy was citrusy and her late mother's was floral ー but she was certainly unique, her vitality spiced with distinct notes of cinnamon.

Her power coiled inside of her and released in an instant of explosive energy. She launched herself at the leader of the gang, bypassing his flailing stick easily and landing a very solid punch to his cheekbone. Vanessa almost cringed at the wet crack, before snapping out of her incredulity to assist her new, tentative ally.

She kept the knife in its sheath, defending herself carefully with the flat of the blade (ceramic tended to be good for cutting, but brittle) while landing kicks to finish, aiming mostly for the fleshier areas of the stomach and waist to avoid seriously injuring any of her assailants. While it seemed that they had plenty of experience fighting, all but the leader were unarmed and none of them were professionally trained like she was, or like Minoru appeared to be.

Within moments, the fight was over, and the men scuttled away in defeat.

Minoru huffed as they left, "I alone would have been enough." There was a brief pause before she added grudgingly, "But you're quite good."

"Thank you," Vanessa replied graciously, brushing the dust from her jacket. "Now can you tell me who you are, exactly?"

"Maybe later," she answered, making Vanessa inhale deeply to hide her growing frustration. "And only if you tell me what brings you here."

Vanessa hesitated, for good reason. Did she dare tell Minoru she was tracking an energy source that has the potential to be as powerful as the Tesseract or the Scepter?

The answer was no. But at the same time, there were things she also needed to understand, and at the rate things were going, she wouldn't be getting answers any time soon.

"Fine," she agreed, choosing her next words carefully. "I apologize for running away from you, by the way. I wasn't sure what your intentions were and paranoia kind of comes with the job, which brings me here… I'm here on a SHIELD research project. We're looking into gamma radiation."

It was not a complete lie ー just not the whole truth. Minoru seemed somewhat mollified, but not entirely convinced.

"Gamma radiation?" she pushed on. "In the city?"

"Just around," said Vanessa casually. She could feel the pulse of the energy just a few blocks away from their current location, constantly present at the base of her skull. "Our instruments have been picking up an unusual amount of it in Kathmandu, yes. The first possible source I need to inspect isn't far from here."

At this, Minoru's dark eyes narrowed, the elegant arches of her eyebrows drawing in towards each other. "Is that so?" she muttered.

She cast a barely perceptible glance at the entrance of the alley, towards the direction of the energy signature. If it were not for Vanessa's enhanced vision, she would have missed this fleeting piece of confirmation that Minoru knew what she was searching for.

"You know where it is and the cause of it," she observed. "But I don't suppose you want me to. Are you going to stop me?"

The older woman seemed to be considering the same question, the contemplation plain in her expression. Finally, she shook her head. "No," she said, shooting another brief look at a tall pagoda in the distance. "But keep in mind that I'm interested."

With that vague statement, Minoru spun on her heel and jumped, landing with one leap on the top a building and disappearing from sight. Vanessa sighed, resigning herself to returning to the crowded, winding streets, wondering how the heck she got herself tangled in something weird, _again_.

 _It isn't quite as bad as an alien invasion, though, is it?_

 _Not yet, anyway._

Minoru's presence followed her closely from the rooftops as she wove through the tangle of people, turning down a vendor as politely as possible as he offered her dried persimmon. The dusty fragrance of a familiar childhood snack almost tempted her to pause, but she had a task to finish and answers to find.

Carried away from his hawking calls by the stream of people, Vanessa very nearly knocked over a running child as she freed herself from the other travellers. This was because her internal radar was screaming at her as she found herself in front of a small, unadorned door. She could very plainly feel the signature she was tracking within the building, and a quick check with her phone told her that she had the right coordinates as well.

She raised a hand, her knuckles hovering over the wood to knock. But what would she say if someone were to open it? _Hello, I'm here to inspect your home for gamma radiation. And no, you don't have a choice in this matter._ Oh, she was beginning to sound like Stark.

Before she could regret her decision, she rapped on the door three times, and took a step back to wait. She could feel Minoru's signature perched overhead on a tall pagoda, watching her like a hawk.

What if this is a trap of some kind? she wondered. It was definitely possible. But she didn't have much time to dwell on the fact, because then the door opened.

And standing in front of her was Tina Minoru.

* * *

It was a split-second's decision that Tina Minoru pulled out her sling ring and jumped through a portal, nearly breaking the record she had set for portal-casting speed amongst the Kamar-Taj practitioners. Appearing in front of the door to the compound as Vanessa Liang's knuckles tapped against the wood, she startled the sorcerer who was just about to answer the call.

"Sorry," she said quickly, recognizing the dark-skinned magician as her own apprentice, Karl Mordo, and one of the most recent additions to their host of more advanced trainees. "I'll get it."

He nodded, and with wide, surprised eyes shuffled a few steps back. Minoru unlocked the door with magic and swung it open, revealing a bewildered looking SHIELD agent, whose eyes flickered upwards briefly and back to her.

"Come in," she said briskly. "I'll take you to see someone."

The younger woman stepped in tentatively, the expression on her face plainly shouting, _Why am I doing this?_ Seeing this, Tina smiled a little.

"This is Kamar-Taj," she announced, flinging open a set of large double doors to reveal a long balcony that overlooked the training area and wrapped around the base of the biggest pagoda. A class of novices were training with sling rings in the courtyard below, instructed by one of her close friends, Yvonne Marks, a magician who came from the London Sanctum.

Vanessa only nodded slowly, taking in the scene with her mouth slightly ajar. "Uh, okay."

"Er… Master Minoru," said Karl Mordo somewhat timidly, pulling Minoru aside. "One of the first things you taught me was to not let just _anyone_ in."

"She isn't just _anyone_ , Mordo. And the second thing I taught you was to trust my judgement," she retorted. "And trust yourself. It's not often you come across someone of such caliber, and it's hard to deny that we're in desperate need of new additions."

When the Dark Dimension launched an assault on the Hong Kong Sanctum a month ago, the Masters of the Mystic Arts realized that their ability to defend Earth from Dormammu was no longer adequate. While they had managed to fend the attack off, it was at a cost they weren't quite willing to pay. As a result, all senior disciples like Minoru herself were given instructions to recruit if they found someone suitable.

Originally assigned to keep an eye out for any suspicious behaviour from Vanessa Liang, an enhanced, while she was in Kathmandu, Minoru ended up more intrigued by the Avenger and SHIELD agent after she found her way to the doorstep of Kamar-Taj without any help or indication of having knowledge about the place.

Normally, the protective wards over the building turned away spyware and magical tracking, but they did not seem to hinder Vanessa Liang. There either had to be a hole in security or Sterling was gifted; Tina Minoru was willing to take her chances with the latter, given their situation.

Mordo pulled her aside, a few steps away from their guest. "She's one of them, isn't she? One of those people they call the Avengers?"

Minoru nodded. "And?"

"How do you expect her to do this and _that_ at the same time?"

She blinked twice. In the rush and excitement of finding a promising recruit, she had completely forgotten to consider that said promising recruit was also one of several individuals known as 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes' and on her way to becoming a celebrity.

But they could find a way around that, she decided. One of their most skilled sorcerers was once a famous athlete but managed to balanced his two careers without exposing Kamar-Taj to the public. While Vanessa Liang's situation was somewhat different, she hadn't seen so much potential since… well, _herself._ The opportunity was just too good to pass up.

 _Okay, so maybe I don't have a way around it yet, but it wouldn't hurt to enlist the girl as an ally.  
_

"What is this place?" asked Vanessa, her incredulous eyes glued to the neat, tidy row of swirling portals. "You call it… Kamar-Taj?"

"Yes," she replied proudly," and I believe we have here what you seek."

This statement seemed to prompt Vanessa out of her fascinated stupor, and she met Minoru's dark brown eyes with a pair of her own. "And why, may I ask, are you telling me this?"

* * *

As she followed Minoru through the compound, Vanessa listened to the _sorceress_ (she was still trying to wrap her head around it) explain.

"We call ourselves the Masters of the Mystic Arts," she said, tilting her head towards the group of training men and women in the courtyard. Vanessa hadn't been able to discern their signatures earlier, and she speculated that it was due to the fact that they were masked by several larger ones, the most potent of which was the one she was tracking.

"The Masters of the Mystic Arts," she repeated. "How did you get these abilities?"

At this, Minoru wore a prideful smile. "Unlike you Avengers, whose powers were concocted in a lab or built from machinery, we _learned_ this."

Vanessa didn't take any offense from her statement. It was impressive, no matter which way she looked at it. A man maybe in his early thirties extended two fingers in front of him and a shower of red sparks opened up a rift in the air, which expanded into what appeared to be a dimensional doorway. Within a spinning circle, she could see a painstakingly familiar skyline ー New York.

"That's a portal? Can you just go to New York like that?" The fascination in her voice must have been palpable. "How does it work?"

"Magic," Minoru smirked. "We can't divulge the secrets of our art to outsiders, though."

"You let me in," Vanessa pointed out. "I still don't know why you did that."

A voice in her mind was alternately yelling _it's a trap!_ and _none of this makes sense!_ , but she was ignoring it in favour of her curiousity. There was so much that she wanted to know that she didn't even know where to begin.

"Soon," Minoru promised, taking a look back to make sure Vanessa was following. She waved to a passing sorcerer, who waved back with a sweep of a cream-coloured robe. "I'm going to take you to see someone."

"Who?" Beneath the veil of illusion, Vanessa's eyes were still glowing silver, taking in everything with flawless detail. It was beginning to become difficult to focus on anything, with the orange sparks of magic to her right and a long corridor of ornately decorated doors to her left. Her senses were also going haywire as she noted that Kamar-Taj (whatever the place was) wasn't exactly picky about who they allowed entry. She saw in the courtyard below people of varying nationalities, ages, and a myriad of different energies, all thrumming with bright vitality.

"The Ancient One," replied Minoru. The response caused Vanessa to temporarily forget her awe and sigh, long and deeply through her nose. Why did everything have to be so _cryptic_?

"The Ancient One," she echoed, doing her utmost to conceal her impatience. "Who are they, exactly?"

The woman stopped abruptly in front of a panelled door of wood and paper, and she slid it open to reveal a wizened old man whose head was bent over an open folio. "The Sorcerer Supreme," Minoru declared.

She couldn't have been talking about the old man, Vanessa decided ー how could he be the Sorcerer Supreme when there was a much more potent presence that lay on the other side of a painted screen?

"I'm here to see the… Ancient One," she told the man. He glanced up from his reading and nodded once, picking up the papers and leaving the room with his dark blue robes trailing on the floor.

"Not bad," said Minoru. "Most who come here have more preconceptions."

Vanessa shrugged. "I trust only what I see. And feel."

"Then tell me, Miss Liang," came a harmonious female voice as the tip of a shoe made itself visible from behind the screen. "What do you see and feel here?"

The speaker stepped out into the open and Vanessa gave herself a moment to take in the Ancient One before answering. She was a slender woman with a shaved head, her gait graceful as she made her way towards the centre of the room in the cream-coloured robes that seemed to be the standard. She held a sort of timeless energy ー living up to her name as the 'Ancient One.'

Vanessa briefly wondered if _she_ were the source of the signature she'd been tracking, before dismissing the idea. There was a larger power still waiting in the bowels of the compound.

"A simple room occupied by three people," said Vanessa, looking around the place in rumination. "None of them quite ordinary."

The Ancient One tilted her head as an indication to continue.

"And I feel energy," she concluded. "So much of it, in all sorts of natures and forms. Who exactly are you people, and what exactly is this place?"

The Sorcerer Supreme smiled and gestured to a low table surrounded with wooden seats. "Please, Miss Liang, take a seat. There is much to talk about if you want your questions answered. Would you like some tea?"


End file.
